A Clash of Cultures
Six years ago, an England team on the rise travelled to Asia to face a quietly confident Pakistan on the back of a historic summer victory against the world number 1s. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. With history forever having the habit of repeating itself, it won’t be much of a hunch to think that at some point in this tour Pakistan would do something that the English (and by that I include the public and the media with the cricket fraternity) will frown upon. Defensive editorials will be written in the liberal papers, while the conservatives would ask for finally punishing Pakistan so that they learn their lesson. An odd voice or two will call it the ‘clash of cultures’ not realizing how apt it was.
Pakistan’s relationship with the English is difficult to pigeonhole. It’s a country founded by brown sahibs for a bunch of people who wanted to be brown sahibs; for independence from the British, of course. A country ruled by the military who’ve thought of themselves as the successors to the Raj, as evidenced by a Sandhurst-educated General being the country’s longest-serving ruler; and also the country where the three harbingers of change have all been Oxford-educated. It is a country where an inability to speak grammatically correct English has become a staple of comedy on Urdu television; but the inability to speak “correct Urdu” is seen as Prime Minister-worthy. Yet few things unite the masses quite like a hatred of the west – or rather the influence of the west on our pure culture. Cricket remains at the heart of that culture; but of course, the two men who have done the most to mould Pakistani cricket were both Oxonians.
The influence of the gora rule is still present in how we judge our batting, and batsmen. While India have moved on from such discussions, Pakistanis still seem to regard technique as the holy grail. That is why an Asad Shafiq is given ample opportunities to fail before someone like Fawad Alam is considered praiseworthy. Meanwhile, India romped to the top of the world on the back of a batting line-up that included Sehwag, Laxman, Ganguly and Dhoni. Six decades on from independence, we still don’t know what to incorporate, and what not to.
But the Pakistanis are not alone in this. It’s just that the English are more convinced by the lies they tell themselves. The history of English cricket can better be described as the myth of English cricket. How a game monetised by the likes of Thomas Lord and William Lambert, came to represent the Corinthian values of the English upper-class is a lesson in propaganda. It is a sport whose custodians reinforced class divisions and racism; yet after defeat in all these battles they have managed to hold onto the reins of the game, and still presented themselves as the upholders of Victorian virtue. When this myth of honesty collides with the naked “dishonesty” of Pakistan, controversies are bound to erupt.
While Pakistani batting remains English in the mind – of the administrators and the public – the bowling is anything but that; it is completely a product of the society it is part of. It is innovative, aggressive (sometimes mindlessly so: Mohmmad Sami), unique and quite often un-Corinthian. The two greatest Pakistani inventions in the past twenty-five years are reverse swing and the doosra: both can best be described as deceipt with skill; both have not rubbed the old-school in the best way (although reverse swing has become acceptable since the English became good enough to do it). Pakistani bowlers are the cricketing equivalents of South American footballers. Products of cultures of developing countries which take a perverse pride in their abilities to fool the authorities and be champions of what is colloquially referred to as ”do numbri”. When either of them bend the rules of the game, the English focus on what rules they are bending, their countrymen focus on the skill being employed in bending those rules.
But that is not much of a surprise. The easiest way to explain the cultural viewpoints would be thus: the MPs expenses scandal was a key reason in removing Labour from power in Britain; a Pakistani MP can come out and say that corruption is his right, and nobody even takes notice.
So roll on the 2012 series. I look forward to more misunderstandings, accusations, fiascos and oh, cricket from the best two Test nations in 2011.
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