| Where is that Waterford Crystal cup anyway? |
| The one that was presented to I**** K***, the captain of our winning team at Melbourne in 1992. Does anyone remember where it has been kept? We need to find it, for only that crystal orb will be able to reveal to us what went wrong with almost everything connected with this topsy-turvy world Cup of 1996. |
| Watching the carefully expunged replay of the presentation ceremony in Melbourne four year ago, when Sir Colin Cowdrey handed the crystal trophy to 1**** K*** with the words: 'Now, 1****, you won't drop this, will you?', one wondered whether even they with all their collective experience could have foreseen the sort of upsets, incredulities and near miracles in store for the next World Cup. |
| The first miracle, of course, was that the World Cup was held at all. The Committee had taken a calculated risk by agreeing to allow the three sub-continentals - India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - to host the tournament. It was almost akin to inviting the Bosnians, the Serbs and the Croats to organize a football match with a bomb as the ball. They paid for it when the West Indians and the Australians refused to play in Sri Lanka. They paid for it again when the Calcutta crowd refused to allow the Sri Lankans to consummate their well-deserved victory against the Indian team. And they paid for it yet again when the official organizers of the Finals at Lahore, following the Prime Minister at the conclusion of the presentation ceremony; picked up their stumps and went home, leaving a crowd of thirty thousand ticket holders and another twenty thousand gate wrigglers watch the victorious Sri Lankan captain Ranatunga being flung to the ground, the victory cheque pilfered and the victory lap of honour aborted. |
| In one sense the 1996 World Cup might as well have been the Olympics, for never before on the cricket field have there been such examples of what the Greeks call hubris - that presumptuous arrogance or insolence which provokes the gods to retaliate. The West Indians and the Australians displayed it when they refused to play in Sri Lanka. The West Indians were subsequently trounced (Brian Lara notwithstanding) by the inconsequential Kenyans, and the Australians were forced to eat the equivalent of Aussie crow at the Finals, fed to them in 243 bites by the hosts they had so offensively offended. |
| If teams behaved badly, their players suffered worse. Aamer Sohail taunted the Indian bowler Prasad and was cleanly bowled in the very next ball. Azharuddin, captain of the Indian side, boasted that the Eden grounds at Calcutta were especially lucky for him, and looked incredulous when he was caught on the very first ball by Jayasuriya. And the nimble-fingered Australian Shane Warne spun the ball in every direction except that of the Sri Lanka wickets, conceding 58 runs without any wicket during his ten overs. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make cricketers. |
| Those whom governments wish to destroy they first make heroes. . And nowhere during the entire tournament was the absence of 1**** K*** so visible as during the Finals. His fans had heard him commenting on the Bangalore fiasco. They had read about him going to the airport to receive his rest fallen boys on their return, but among the stand at the Lahore Finals there was a swell of expectation to spot the hero who had held the cup and our national pride aloft in 1992. |
| That pre-eminence was perhaps too much to achieve again. The same players do not always play the same game; just as the same musicians did not always playa tune in the same way. That is why the post of a conductor was invented, and that is why captains are created. Wasim Akram had one of the finest teachers in the business, but like Anthony Eden who succeeded Sir Winston Churchill as prime Minister of Great Britain in the 1950s but could not repeat his successes, Wasim met his own Suez at Bangalore. |
| As captain, Wasim has shouldered the blame for our team's debacle with fortitude. It cannot be easy for him to keep to himself why his team appeared to go into the field without any perceptible game plan. It must be even harder for him to justify the inclusion of the ageing Javed Miandad simply so that he could endure the humiliation of being run out of his cricketing career. And only he would perhaps know why no-one amongst the selectors realized that Coca Cola was the official drink and that Inzamam UI Haq was known to run only after a Pepsi. |
| The 1996 world cup is over. The Sri Lankans have taken their gold trophy back to their country. The crowds which cheered them and which sat for hours with stoic fortitude and commendable continence, eyeing the open field of the cricket ground with longing, have gone home. The 8000 or so policemen commandeered from neighbouring districts simply to ensure that their relatives were given free admission to numbered seats paid for by the public have returned to the postings. The hospitality tents which advertised a World cup breakfast, lunch and tea at $320 per head (more than the per capita annual income of an average Pakistani) have been dismantled. The massive four towers with their floodlights stand redundant. And the stadium so brilliantly and speedily refurbished by Nayyar Ali Dada now stand empty. The miracle is over. |
| But where is that crystal globe? While it was being brought home in 1992, there was a cruel rumour at the time that it had been thrown and smashed. In1996, the rumour was that the match itself had been thrown, deliberately to appease the bookies. A figure of six hundred crores of rupees of bets has been bandied about. If that is a fact, arid who knows for sure for anything it seems is possible in a World Cup, then it must the only occasion in history of the subcontinent, when so much has been owed by so many to so few. |
| For those who believe in an after-life even beyond the World cup (there was one unfortunate Indian who didn't and committed suicide), there is one miracle which will provide grounds for hope during the hot summer ahead. |
| WAPDA managed to provide a continuous supply of electricity to the stadium for over ten hours at a stretch – without disrupting play. And if that is not a miracle, then nothing in this world is. |
| Published in THE FRIDAY TIMES, 28 March - 3 April 1996, and reprinted in The BARK OF A PEN |
