Pakistan in a fix
The cricket scam has dented the country’s image at a time when it’s also reeling from the worst floods in living memory, says Arab News. The timing couldn’t be worse.
August 31, 2010 1:09 by shafeer
For Pakistanis, cricket is a passion. For that reason, the match fixing allegations made in the British press against members of the touring Pakistan team are devastating. The country is already reeling from the worst floods in living memory — a crisis that has forced Pakistanis to re-evaluate the competence and integrity of their authorities. Meanwhile, terrorism continues to stalk the land — just last week saw more attacks; in one, a teenage suicide bomber killed a former member of Parliament and religious scholar and at least 26 others at a the gates of a mosque in south Waziristan.
Meanwhile, the economy remains teetering on the brink, its state of health made all the worse by the floods. As if that were not enough, the gruesome torture and killing of two innocent brothers in Sialkot by a lynch mob, filmed on YouTube with the local police seen standing by doing nothing, has sent shock waves across the country. The Pakistani media were already full of questions about where the country was heading, not just economically or politically but morally as well.
Amid this pervading sense of a nation in crisis, cricket has been a panacea — able to give people hope and excitement when the news elsewhere has been unrelentingly grim. But now comes the suggestion that even the country’s national team is tainted. It could not have happened at a worse time.
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