Shoaib Malik - An Utterly Needless Controversy

Shoaib Malik, the 25-year-old Pakistani skipper, hails from the city of Sialkot, the north eastern industrial hub of Punjab. A versatile performer on the field, Malik had been earmarked as a future captain in Pakistan Cricket circles much before his eventual appointment following the debacle of the 2007 World Cup. His obvious cricketing talent, however, hasn’t always meant a clean bill of health in the disciplinary records.Twice he has been reported (and subsequently cleared) for having a suspect action, so much so that the captain now bowls only infrequently and almost never balls his contentious “doosra” delivery. His action however, hasn’t been the only polemic point of his career. Two years ago, in Pakistan’s inaugural domestic Twenty20 competition he intentionally lost a match, leading his native Saiklot Stallion team against the Karachi Zebras with the intention of engineering an exit for a rival side, the Lahore Eagles. The Eagles had earlier won against Sialkot in a game where Malik’s side was docked overs for a poor over rate despite, in Malik’s opinion, having an acceptable over rate. Malik’s actions as such were seen as something of a protest against them.

But the Pakistan Cricket Board (and very rightly at that) wasn’t a tiny bit impressed. Immediate actions were undertaken that involved declaring the result of the match null and void and penalizing Malik of his entire match fee and handing him a 1 test match ban. Malik’s punishment could have been even more severe, but the fact that he had in due course apologized for his actions, admitting to being caught up “in the heat of the moment”, probably saved him from further penalties. Rameez Raja at the time said the fiasco could have a lasting impact on Malik’s career, especially his chances of gaining captaincy in the future.Though Raja’s fears failed to materialize when Malik emerged as an obvious contender for the job after Inzamam’s exit, the young man’s impassioned temperament has more the once led him to say or do things he later regrets. After winning many plaudits through the course of the recently concluded ICC Twenty20 World Cup, including for his leadership of a young unrated side right down to the final, Malik landed in hot water over what appears to be a gaffe at the tournament’s awards ceremony.

“I want to thank you back home Pakistan and where the Muslim lives all over the world,” said Malik, addressing his “Muslim” fan base. Or so we’re told by Mukal Kesavan and co. in any case. Kesavan said he re-saw the highlights to double check if those were the exact words the Pakistani skipper had said. Too bad he didn’t make the same effort to check Malik’s proficiency over the language. English is probably Malik’s third language after Punjabi and Urdu. The discussion at Kesavan’s Cricinfo blog Men In White has generated no less then 681 comments. In separate mailing lists in my Inbox, more discussion is underway, with people split between raising mild eyebrows and taking severe offense.

The rest of the blogosphere, cricket message boards and the larger social web are all abuzz with discussions on a similar theme. Even the MSM has now caught up with the news, with The Hindustan Times carrying a report on the controversy in its Tuesday issue. One Indian fan, Nostromo, at the World-A-Team Cricket Message Board, took so much offense, he equated the remark with “a racist comment”.

“Does a West Indian captain ever thank "all the blacks in the World" when things go well for them?” he asked in apparent outrage, “how can Malik (and those who control him) assume that all the other Muslims support the Pakistani cricket team, even if they have heard of it?” I guess it was a convenient assumption for Nostromo to make himself that the statement was a reflection of those who “control” Malik (whoever those happened to be anyway!).

The comment has equally enticed non-Muslim Pakistani supporters. In a discussion on the blog All Things Pakistan, commentator Christian Pak asked the skipper if Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, the U.S., Canada and Gulf who supported the Pakistan team “don’t count?” In another blog Nae Ireumeun Mitasha narrated how the comment has hurt Indian Muslims:

“Someone I’m close to is Muslim. Living in India. A prominent family in the town. Minutes after the match, there were demonstrations outside the house. “Muslims Murdabad, Pakistan Murdabad.” It was a dangerous, frightening situation. Shops closed down in the neighborhood, anticipating violence. It’s happened before, and I’m not blaming Malik entirely. It happens in a country with tensions high between the religions. […]There were Muslims today who felt accused and wronged in their own country, who had to bear unjustified looks from other ignorant people (there’s no lack of ignorance in this world), who were verbally and physically attacked in many places, who were saddened and shocked to be questioned and treated in this manner, when they simply wanted to do what everyone else was doing: share sweets, sing songs of victory, give prayers and thanks.”

Almost everywhere, the cliché that sport and religion do not mix has come out in full force, with some people seeing the comments as another reflection of the Pakistan team’s so-called growing religious clout. Whilst I’m not here to endorse what Malik said, I cannot help but think that if a mere verbal comment made by a cricket player can provoke ordinary people to react violently like this, then there has to be something fundamentally skewed in our psychology.

As a practicing Muslim, passionate cricket fan and patriotic Pakistani myself, I can understand all these hurt feelings and suspicions everywhere. Indeed, sport is a bridge. It’s something that brings together diverse cultures and societies, not build fences around them. Our world today is polarized enough as it is, but international sport remains one of the few global arenas that remains, by and large, unaffected by our self-made divisions. That’s why sport is such a splendid realm of human society. And that’s why this controversy is as needless as it is.

But before we cast the Pakistan skipper as the villain, we must take several things into consideration. The first is that the man we’re speaking about is handicapped in the language he was using. And I can’t stress that enough. Malik is not a lot different from other Pakistani captains of the past in that he can barely put together two sentences in English without altering the subject verb agreement, messing up the pronoun case and distorting many other grammar rules along the way. That is something we cannot blame him for.

Sure he is an international sportsman but we cannot blame him for not being fluent in a language that only a select class in his native country can speak in. We should, as human beings capable of erring ourselves, give him the leverage of having a slip of tongue.

Unless Malik specifically comes out and clarifies one cannot automatically assume what his implications were, and certainly in no way equate them with the rest of Pakistan’s views. May be he wanted to thank all Pakistani Muslims around the world, may be he wanted to thank all Pakistanis across the world, irrespective of religion. Maybe what he meant to say was prayers and it ended up coming out as Muslims. Maybe he was compelled to bring religion into a thank you note only because it was the holy month of Ramadan. There could be several things Mr. Malik could have meant, as Pakistani supporter Maranello explains. That one statement could be interpreted in so many different ways does sounds rather improbable, but given the nature of command Shoaib has over the English language, not even one of these can be ruled out. To form a judgment of him, based on any of the possible interpretations, hence, would be unfair.Of course, this isn’t denying that any of these would be correct assumptions on Malik’s part to make, if he made them at all. Not even every Pakistani supports his team, let alone talks of all Muslim Pakistanis or Muslims across the world. It’s a flawed world view if he holds it. But herein lies the catch. We can’t possibly be sure that that really is his world view at all.

Libertarians like Gaurav Sabnis don’t buy into the language barrier argument. They contest that even if this was to be Shoaib’s world view, we should respect it as such. “Why should we expect everyone to be politically correct?” Sabnis asked rhetorically on the Different Strokes mailing list, “Shoaib is entitled to his beliefs”. While this is a charitable view to hold, I do not personally think we have the kind of tolerance as a collective human race these days for it to be considered pragmatic.Besides, as numerous people have noted, sportsmen and women and celebrities in general, do not, in today’s day and age, have the liberty to speak their minds freely without any worries about the ramifications. This is the price they have to pay for fame, for being in the public eye all the time. Every move they make, every word they utter, is scrutinized over and over, juxtaposed with established norms and judged with respect to the precedent it sets for the masses. And in that respect, someone in Malik’s position certainly did have a great amount of responsibility. Perhaps Shoaib was a bit clumsy. Casual if you will. Irresponsible if you’re stretching it. But suspecting him of deliberate idiocy or genuine intentions of being provocative or causing people this hurt or offense? That would be stretching it too far. “A storm in tea cup” as Mr. Dasgupta would call it.

It would be cricket’s loss if after such a wonderful tournament, and such a wonderful end, it all comes down to discussing the virtues and vices of political correctness. This should be the time to rejoice the spectacle of sport, its unpredictability and character, which can humble many a champion and crown many an underdog. It’s unfortunate that a faux pas came at such time as it did. But let’s not lose sleep over it, shall we?