ON THE DEATH OF BOB WOOLMER, THE PAKISTAN CRICKET COACH





The game of cricket was once a gentlemanly sport; it is now a blood sport. Gone are the days when it was played on an English village green on weekends if the sun was shining, gone the white flannels and red cricket balls, the high teas and cucumber sandwiches, gone the gentle murmurs of 'Bad luck' to a batsman returning to the pavilion.


Nowadays, cricket is played by professional pugilists who compete at any time of the day or night, in coloured uniforms emblazoned with sponsors' logos, watched not by the simply the umpires in the field or the spectators in the stadium but by millions of television viewers across the globe.


Cricket today is more than a game; it is a transnational corporation, with interested stakeholders in every country and at every level, among them speculators prepared to stake fortunes on which team wins and which loses, which batsman scores a six or which bowler scalps a wicket. From being a genteel game, cricket has become big business and like any business, it is not for the fainthearted. [EXTRACT]





Published in DAWN, 5 April 2007.