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Wild horse?
Cricket would be a lot less
interesting without Shoaib
Akhtar around.
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MIND
GAME |
FOURTH UMPIRE
Nov 15, 2006: There was something unnatural about him, something very wild. In fact, he told this writer once during an
interview, “I am a wild horse.”
The same day, I was amazed – those days I was covering cricket regularly – to see the bulging muscles as he came out of the gym in some Indian hotel. He looked more like a body builder than a fast bowler.
One was reminded of the extremely muscular, extremely fast Ben Johnson who beat Carl Lewis but was
disqualified eventually. But then, drug-aided or not, he still was the fastest man in history.
Perhaps, Shoaib will also go down in history as the man who ‘hurled’ the fast deliveries in cricket.
‘Hurled’ is used deliberately because to say that his action was ‘suspect’ is to be charitable to him. Ask
Sachin Tendulkar, who has faced some of the most vicious balls that he bowled. Drugs and chucking. What
a combination.
Most probably, the Colonel who was looking for his 15 minutes of fame and easily got them too was right. He must have hit Bob Woolmer. He will hit anybody who challenged him or his ego.
 Two things come to the mind. How he quarreled and abused a police officer when India toured Pakistan
after a long break is the first. The other one was when a cricket correspondent tried desperately to get
in touch Shoaib Akhtar’s parents. Apparently, Akhtar had given strict instructions to his folks not to meet
any pressman. The reporter finally approached an influential person to talk to the fast bowler. He told him that his parents were ‘backward” and so he didn’t want them to meet the press.
Cricket definitely was better off with him rather than without him. For the simple reason that if all
cricketers were as studious and careful as Rahul Dravid, that itself would be so boring and the game
wouldn’t be worth following.
It is really funny that Bob Woolmer is now denying that he was ever hit in the bus. This was the same
pompous Englishman who once said in a press conference in India that if Shoaib doesn’t do well, he would
chase him all over the city with a bat!
Coming back to Shoaib’s looks, long locks and all, there was this devilish look about his face and in
hindsight, that might have been because of the effect of drugs. Wherever he went, they blew up his pictures
and no doubt he was photogenic. But look closely at one of his close-up photos – and I request the editors
to put up one such photo along with this piece – and tell me if there wasn’t something strange about the
way he looked.
In this column, I had raised the issue of drugs once earlier. If Pakistan players are guilty of this habit,
some others are bound to be guilty too. A magazine article once named Ajit Agarkar and quoted
the then coach Anshuman Gaekwad to say that drug use was rampant in Indian cricket.
The stakes are far too high in cricket that one would be surprised if nobody has ever touched performance-enhancing drugs. Let us learn a thing or two from the way the weightlifters in this country
including some legendary names like Kunjarani Devi took the easy way out.
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