Hooked On!

What is your most memorable moment of the 1983 world cup? Is it the sight of Kapil Dev catching Viv Richards or the sight of last man Michael Holding getting out? Let me tell you mine. My abiding moment of that match is that of Mohinder Amarnath hooking a menacing Andy Roberts bouncer into the crowd. 'What a shot' - I exclaimed as the ball sailed over the fine leg boundary for a six and i was well and truly 'hooked' onto the game.

The hook shot has always been one of my favourite cricketing shots ever since i started following cricket. It is not the sole favourite though - the cover drive on one knee , the wristy leg side clip and the straight drive are others in that list. However there is something about a fast disappearing entity that fascinates the human mind. Maybe the feeling that it is not going to last increases its beauty in the eye of its beholder and the mind tries to absorb as much of it as possible. The hook shot in cricket belongs to the same class. Hence this affinity towards it.

There is no shot in cricket which is as beautiful to watch or requires as much courage to execute as the hook shot. It requires the batsman to be technically sound and to be perfectly balanced. It also needs a lot of courage to not only stand up to the fast man's bouncer but to hit the ball convincingly too. A small mistake might result in you getting out or getting your jaw dislodged.

The beauty of Cricket apart from the obvious sublime skills on display, is the multi-layered aspect of it. The actual game played between the two sides forms the main battle which in turn includes various small fascinating battles. One such battle is that of a great batsman against a genuine fast bowler who strains his muscle and mind to get rid of him. The fast bowler's greatest weapon is the bouncer , it is used not only to get the batsman out but also to mentally defeat the batsman. So often we have seen that a batsman after facing a barrage of bouncers gets out softly by nicking it to the keeper or slips. This is because he is mentally so battered by the bouncers that he loses his concentration and focus. In the face of this bouncer menace the only weapon the batsman has is to pull out his hook shot which tells the bowler that even he is keen to battle him and defeat him as well. That is the power of the shot.

The shot was in fact invented by the great West Indian batsman Rohan Kanhai who realised in true West Indian spirit that the best way to defend against relentless fast bowling is to attack it. In hind sight such an audacious shot could only have been invented by a West Indian as no other country epitomised the attacking, instinctive way of playing the game as the west indies. And over the years they produced some of the best hookers in the game with the likes of Sobers, Richards, Lloyd and Greenidge. India too had some great hookers in the 80s like Amarnath and Kapil Dev.

However the modern batsman, pampered with an overdose of one-day cricket and now Twenty20 is reluctant to play the hook. Instead he is satisfied with slog-sweeping over mid-wicket or smashing the ball over the bowler's head as they are less risky and provide the needed result. In today's result oriented world that is what counts. The fact that wickets around the world have slowed down and genuine fast bowling having become rare has reduced the frequency of the shot. Slower wickets mean that batsman no longer are pinned to the crease and can advance down the ground to fast bowlers as well. The absence of quality fast bowling renders the shot useless as you can take on the bowlers using less risky shots like the drive or pull.

What ever be its current disposition it is a shot i really enjoy watching and hope that more and more modern day batsman execute it with panache.

Requiem for a Failed State

"Pakistan is an International migraine". This statement is not mine, its not that of the Indian government, instead its that of former US secretary of state Madeline Albright. Its a perceptive statement coming from a country that till recently considered Pakistan its ally. But alas truth has its own way of playing hide and seek and unravelling itself at the most unintended hour.Hence thanks to the Pak-inspired Mumbai 26/11 terrorist attacks the truth that India has always known has hit the world. Pakistan is a Failed state which cannot stop its people from turning terrorists and attacking the world, and no one can argue against it now. Pakistan is the new 'enfant terrible' of the world.

The Mumbai 26/11 tragedy and its causes and repercussions have been debated and discussed ad nauseam and I don't want to flog the dead horse again. Instead what we can do is understand the psychology of the source nation of this terror and try to find out why it has become what it has become - a failed state. The unfortunate aspect about the failed Pakistani state is that it's not only hurting Pakistan but also the rest of the world including India, it has become like a time bomb which can explode anytime along with the rest of the world.

The origin of this 'failure' can be traced back to the origins of the state of Pakistan itself. In a way both India and Pakistan were both Ideas as opposed to concrete states. However India was an Idea of cohesiveness whereas Pakistan was an idea of divisiveness. India said 'unity in diversity', Pakistan said 'unity in homogeneity'. Hence Pakistan as an idea was always hollow - destined for failure - and India as an idea however difficult to realize was solid. Pakistan came about not because of a righteous struggle but by the vices and machinations of one man - Jinnah. Pakistan you can say was like an old man's mistress, she was looked after as long as the old man was alive and derided and abused by his family when he was dead. So the Pakistan that Jinnah managed to cut out of India triumphed only in its formation and plunged towards destruction when he was gone. Jinnah's Pakistan led to the killing of millions of people and till today millions of people suffer because of the Pakistan he formed. According to me Jinnah along with Hitler ranks among the most notorious villains in history who has the blood of millions of people on his hand. Pakistan is a classic case of what happens to the world when a lunatic is given a free-hand.

The state of Pakistan has been plagued by a confusion of ideas. This it owes to its 'father' Jinnah. All along Jinnah had espoused for a Muslim homeland sighting the reason that they were different from the rest of India. He created a communal divide so intense that the citizens of the yet to be formed Pakistan were expecting their new homeland to be an Islamic state like Saudi Arabia. But in a dramatic U-turn the father of Pakistan on the eve of its independence proclaimed that Pakistan will be a secular state!. This plunged the young nation into an ideological abyss. If Pakistan was a secular state then what was the need to separate from India which itself was secular? If it separated from India on communal lines why did not Jinnah proclaim it to be an Islamic state? This confusion is still at the heart of the Pakistani state.

This confusion continued with the nature of government in Pakistan. Jinnah being a lawyer was in the favour of a republican democracy. However what he did not consider was the fact that he had used the numerical strength and of his army (the erstwhile Punjab and Pathan regiments) as a pressure tactic against the British, who needed the army for the ongoing second World war. This arm-twisting worked and the British willingly granted Jinnah's Pakistan despite Indian opposition in the bloody partition endgame. However post-independence the Pakistani army came back for its pound of the flesh and forcefully got it too. There after the struggle for power between the civilian democratic government and the Army has continued to this day at the expense of the state's development. Jinnah brought the army out of the barracks and no one in Pakistan has been able to put them back. What do they say, what goes around , come around!

The Pakistani Army and its protege' the ISI in turn to safeguard their powers used India as a bogey nation and created an India-centric society which did not think beyond India - not even its development. After repeated defeats in conventional warfare the Army decided to "bleed India through a thousand cuts" by starting cross-border terrorism. They with CIA help and Saudi money started the ugly spectre of Jihad in the world and gave the world the ugly word of terrorism. India cried hoarse at Pakistan's connivance in world terror, but no one bought it. This terrorism that was fed by the Pakistan state for three decades is now biting the very hand it fed on. Hence we have the fake mournings of the Pakistan state that "it is a victim of terrorism". Let them ask themselves who encouraged these terrorists in the first place. Was it not them? The fact is that the chickens have come home to roost, and roost they will.

It's a time to mourn a Failed Pakistani state and also a time to solve a pressing international problem. The most important step is to make the weak civilian democratic government powerful, the idea being that a strong government will put the army back in the barracks and eliminate all rogue elements in them as well as the ISI. This will cut out the oxygen supplied to the terrorist organizations which can then be be eliminated by international forces. For the civilian government to become powerful it needs the full co-operation of the international community including India.

India for its part will do well to strengthen its internal security and intelligence so that it can counter any terrorist attack from outside as well as inside. India can also think of organizing state-formed assassination units - on the lines of the Israeli 'Mossad' which was formed to eliminate Palestinian terrorists - which will hunt down and eliminate these terrorist organizations operating out of POK.

But for all this to happen the Pakistani state and its people have to wake up from their state of denial and realize the mistakes they have committed in the last 60 years and form a resolve to end extremism in their society for the good of their country as well as those in the rest of the world. If they do not wake up and put their house in order then the rest of the world which has woken up now will do it for them. And that will not be a pleasant experience for Pakistan.