The Champions League 'voodoo' finally over
By Abdul Ahad Farshori
'Voodoo' a term being associated with many sporting events these days. May it be South Africa unable to break the big tournament 'Voodoo' or it may be Pakistan buoyant to break Champions Trophy 'Voodoo'.

The crowd-pulling sport of wrestling had a glorious stint for Pakistan at the Asian and Commonwealth level right from the country's independence till late eighties. But like the other potential disciplines including athletics and boxing, wrestling has also slowly and gradually lost its popularity and now winning of medals in the Asian and Commonwealth Games is a distant dream for our wrestlers.

According to statistics, from 1954 Manila Asian Games to the 1986 Seoul Asian Games, Pakistan claimed six gold medals, 14 silver and 14 bronze medals in wrestling. The fourth Asian Games in Jakarta in 1962 proved really good for the country's wrestlers as they captured 14 medals including three gold, seven silver and four bronze medals.

However, since 1986 Seoul Asian Games Pakistan have been really struggling on the Asian stage. Similarly, the country's wrestlers used to shine at the Commonwealth level as they were able to clinch 31 medals at this arena from 1954 Commonwealth Games in Canada to the 1970 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games, which included 18 gold, nine silver and four bronze medals.

Pakistani wresters ended on a high note in the 1962 Perth Commonwealth Games when they finished with seven gold and one silver medal.

However, after missing five Commonwealth Games on the trot, the country resumed its once commanding race in a rather disappointing way as it got only two bronze medals in the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. Four years later, Pakistani wrestlers returned empty handed from the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games before they picked up their last bronze in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games.

It is pertinent to mention here that Muhammad Bashir was the only wrestler who made the country proud when he picked up a surprise bronze in the 1960 Rome Olympics, the only medal which Pakistan have picked so far in wrestling in what is the world's biggest sporting spectacle.

Coming down to the South Asian Games, Pakistan have so far managed 26 gold, 35 silver and ten bronze medals in the events held from 1985 Dhaka South Asian Games to 2006 Colombo South Asian Games.

But here one thing is important that Pakistan have been able to win the highest number of six gold medals in the 2006 Colombo South Asian Games in the history of these competitions. One reason of Pakistan's major achievement in the 2006 edition may be that Pakistan's archrivals India have now almost diverted their attention from the South Asian level and are now more focused on Asian, Commonwealth and global competitions.

Like the rest of Pakistan's once potentially glorious sports, in wrestling, too, the country has been in deep trouble for the last 20 to 25 years. There are so many reasons behind the decline of this sport in Pakistan. In the past, there were hundreds of clubs active across the country but now only less than ten per cent of them are in existence. In the 1980's, just in Sindh there were around fifty clubs but now hardly three of them could be seen and those too are in dire need of financial support.

Currently, Jinnah Health Club in Gujranwala which was established in 1960 by Peer Muhammad Pahlwan is the only club of the country, serving as a nursery for Olympic style wrestling. Eighty young wrestlers mostly school and college students are receiving training here on regular basis. The sons of Peer Muhammad Pahlwan including SAF Games gold medallist Muhammad Umar, Muhammad Usman (now nursing a knee injury), Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Salman are currently associated with this club who are showing consistent performance at national and international level. Umar is also looking after the club. Thirteen of the 21 gold medals in the last national event were grabbed by the wrestlers from this club. The same is the case with the NWFP and Balochistan where the game's decline has touched rock bottom due to the extinction of a club culture.

In the past, wrestling was a part of our social fabric and particularly the rural areas were flooded with wrestling events held on a regular basis. But with the expansion of population and want of material needs the villagers slowly lost their fondness for this sport. Similarly, cities also met with the same fate and their expansion due to rising population caused separation of the professional wrestlers from each other which ultimately left them with no option but to lose interest in the sport and enter into diverse businesses to earn their livelihood.

Had the slow decline was given heed at that time, the situation would not have been so frustrating. But it does not mean that the country has no chance to regain the lost glory in the field of wrestling. Still the ground is very much green as abundance of talent is there but there is a need of comprehensive planning and strong commitment on the part of the Pakistan wrestling authorities and the government. One would ask as to how wrestling could be put back on right track and from where the finances would come?

After a thorough research, I would say that in wrestling circles there are so many millionaires, who are former wrestlers of international repute. They are keen to support this game in the country provided they are taken into confidence and are assured that their input will be used properly.

Secondly, as per requirement, the Pakistan Wrestling Federation (PWF) should make efforts to provide proper mats to the respective clubs and the federating units in order to prepare youngsters for the future. Though the purchase of quality mats of international standard may be out of the federation's reach but at least it should manage for the existing clubs and provincial associations the indigenous mates which would cost the federation around Rs200,000 per mat. The Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) would certainly help the PWF in this connection.

But a gigantic task which the PWF must undertake is that it should take the initiative to establish two or three academies in the regions having the richest of talent.

The PWF has recently hunted out 60 wrestlers through the youth championship in Lahore and plans to reduce it to 12 which would be put permanently with the seniors in the PSB sponsored camp in order to groom them. No doubt, it is a step towards right direction but the importance of academies could not be underestimated if they are run properly under the patronage of the PWF, government and sponsors collectively. Though clubs are the real nursery producing institutions for any sport but if such a culture could not be revived then the establishment of academies is the only other alternative to bring the talent and polish it for the future use as we have seen these producing good results in cricket and football circles.

Cricket in Pakistan could be divided into two main groups -- a) The Team (Main Product) and b) Establishment (PCB). First the 'Team' -- the specific context within which we make a final categorization of its performance in the Champions Trophy in South Africa and also their Twenty20 World Cup victory in England, we know only too well: Pakistan's triumph rendezvous in aesthetic celebration of performance excellence.

This team has always been special, it holds a reputation within the Pakistani society that extends beyond the stadia and connects to philosophical discourses that continue to engage students and academics seeking an understanding of the project of Pakistani nation building and historical dispensation.

The team, unpredictable and inconsistent, this year has been on the rise with Younis Khan as its captain and trying fulfilling what is expected of them by the Pakistani society.

It has been a story of a turbulent but rewarding journey to excellence that would have place within the space of historians.

Nothing to be taken away from them, even if they fail lifting the Champions Trophy: With their resolve, method, flair and a sense of purpose they have revived themselves; as history beckons.

Establishment (PCB): The current PCB regime is not generally of traditional type since they haven't been able to introduce even a skimmer. People in the top-tier of the Pakistan Cricket Board haven't been innovators, inventors, just plainly curious. I comment about the questionable state of Pakistan Cricket among the heavily populated administrative offices, but there is also space for the reflective view. If the members of the current regime were farsighted not going in circles to defend their failures, concentrating on the personal and management disasters they might have turned to some other pastime that did not aim to perish from the self-inflicted wounds.

My main point in this article is that PCB's current regime is a symptom of malaise that has existed in Pakistan cricket everywhere for many years, but absurdly we witnessed the Pakistani game becoming the cause and not a harbinger of new ailments. The general hullabaloo, that has surrounded the emergence of an ex-Test cricketer being given the reins of the PCB, has obscured one aspect. That is the lack of support that the PCB was unable to get from the ICC and countries in the Asian Cricket Council (ACC).

When Mr Ijaz Butt was appointed as PCB chairman, after some heart-searching because of his age, he was supposed to pull Pakistan cricket out of the mire. He was seemingly the only choice with people like Arif Ali Khan Abbasi, Dr Zafar Altaf and Lt Gen (retd) Tauqir Zia prostrated near the finish line. He didn't really live up to his reputation of a staunch administrator, and as he developed in his job, his perspectives changed and perception of his duty to cricket altered. He seemingly became unaware of his mission. And I must add, the establishment would never forgive him for not really helping cricket's cause with reference to the geopolitical crises and an ambush on the Sri Lanka team on March 3rd, 2009, however honest his motives.

More recently, Butt's regime has been taken to task quite appropriately in the newspapers. Top writers such as Anjum Niaz and editorials in several newspapers plus the battery of ex-stars have criticised and been very outspoken not only about the dilapidated cricket management, but also about the organization, the administration, and the manipulation of numerous events. Most of the criticism was valid, since there were undoubtedly many mistakes made, as management attempted to use its feet to deal with new situations. And almost hundred percent of the population attached to cricket is behind the concept and agrees that the shake-out is long overdue.

Anjum wrote in Op-Ed page of The News International entitled ' Change at PCB?' on September 12th, 2009: 'No one is crying for Butt today facing imminent collapse. Instead newspaper editorials want him sent back to the pavilion. Butt seems to have lost control over the cricket board affairs entrusted to him by Asif Zardari just over a year ago.'

Pakistan cricket has suffered at the hands of the current regime in one way or another. To start with, the treatment of people like Abdul Qadir, Aamir Sohail and Saleem Altaf was discreditable.

I acknowledge that a huge market-place and their influence on the ICC have helped the Indian cricket board (BCCI) to control the environment around itself, including the behaviour of other cricket bodies. BCCI has often used power, perceiving as legitimate by the social structure. Indian cricket's power-abuse, manipulation and their transcendence to a different status in cricket's intoxicated world cannot be seen as evil or unjust, but the methods with which they have tried to ascend to a different ran isn't really accepted as endemic to game's sociality. I also believe that BCCI ostensibly but intelligently seemingly influenced several crucial ICC decisions including the one to take World Cup 2011 matches out of Pakistan, may be. At the same time, PCB led by a dense, elderly gentleman didn't serve its cause. It behaved naively failing to understand world cricket's dynamics and BCCI's shapes preferences via values, norms, ideologies and all social interaction involving power because ideas operate behind all languages and action.

There is a fragile future of Pakistan to consider. Wracked by geo-political turmoil, threatened by terrorism, and lacking India's wealth, Pakistan cricket has become a pariah, with the PCB government shirking and tricking the national audience about what have they achieved in one year of being in power.

Butt is required to deal with the inadequate dichotomy of universal, absolute essentialism versus particular, relative anti-essentialism? He needs to cleanse the slate, reinvent methodologies to put restraint and eliminate ambiguities to avoid a kind of facile relativism, understanding absolute universals, such as proliferating financial mechanisms, truth and the sanctity of purpose.

Cricket in Pakistan has to emerge as an institution otherwise it would be over. Butt must understand that he is required to comprehend the absolute, serving as a regulative ideal, but at most having glimpses of truth that may well still be relative. This philosophical approach towards development, success, truth and institution-building approach would involve dialogue, recognition of integral self-other relations, and embracing an open-ended process that resists the domination of false attempts at philosophical, cultural, economic, or political aspects of our national game.

The failure of PCB's foreign policy is clear to everyone except its architects, matched by their failure to do the spade-work for re-defining priorities at the domestic and grassroots level. I must admit, PCB has never tried so hard and failed so utterly making and keeping friends in world cricket.

Butt may well not have made links globally but he has managed to get a superfluous 'friend' in a newly born 'Mr. Saqlain Haider'. One of the former captains who achieved much more than the current chairman on the field for his country asked me politely: 'Is Mr. Saqlain Haider related to Mr. Butt; Is he another one like Mr. Mohammad Naeem or even closer?'. And I replied: 'I love people who hate me', and 'I know virtue stands by itself'.