Pakistan's Afridi dilemma

Is Shahid Afridi a true reflection of the worst that Pakistan has to offer?
Impetuous, temperamental, inconsistent, irresponsible, unprofessional, divisive, muddle-headed, uninspiring, conspiratorial, terrible leader and a misogynist who believes women should stick to the kitchen and not play cricket.
Oh yes, he’s certainly entertaining though.
It’s open hunting season on Afridi and his band of losers. And for good reason. Our cricket team is deeply flawed, and not just in the cricketing department. Former greats say Pakistani cricket is at least a decade behind the rest of the world. There are so many ailments that persist just because there are too many vested interests, and too much money invested in the rotting status quo. It is this status quo — borne of deep inertia — that hands us defeats like bitter candy. In this trick or treat, there’s no trick and no treat: just pure, unadulterated incompetence.
So is it then unfair to lynch Afridi? After all, he hasn’t committed a sin he hasn’t committed before — he’s lost matches, lost captaincy, lost his dignity and self-respect, and done all of the above repeatedly. And yet we tolerated him, retained him, embraced him, and even celebrated him. But Afridi remained Afridi: An embarrassment to himself and to us.
It’s an embarrassment though that does not leave us red-faced. Tomorrow Afridi will play a hurricane innings and the nation will open its arms for a big hug. He’s atoned for his sins, we will say. He’s mercurial and unpredictable but what a sportsman! Right?
Wrong.
When we look into Afridi’s eyes, do we not see our own failings staring back at us? Does he not mirror our weaknesses, our shortcomings and our rationality-deficit outlook towards life? Is he not a poster-child for our own chronic instability and deep-seated misogyny, both of which characterise a majority of our homes and workplaces? Like Afridi, do we not embrace emotion and rebuff logic? Like Afridi do we not revere the blaze of glory instead of the drudgery of consistency? And like Afridi, do we not indulge in petty parochial politicking and ethnic, linguistic and fraternal nepotism in our daily lives?
In other words, does our subconscious self-loathing translate into a celebration of Shahid Afridi?
If this rings true, it may explain why flaws in our cricket obvious to rational people remain invisible to many of us. Why else would we not set them right? Imran Khan, arguably the greatest cricketing mind Pakistan has produced, has been lamenting our domestic structure for decades. But no, we will not listen to him and fix the problem. The Pakistan Cricket Board remains a semi-government agency with the Prime Minister in charge. Does the prime minister of Australia or England appoint the cricketing chief? It’s ridiculous. But no, we will not see this as an anachronism — we will not see this as something that is an abomination within our structure.
Our cricket team is possibly the least educated team in the world. But that doesn’t matter, you would say. If you have talent, who cares about your degree, you would argue. And that’s exactly the point. If we cannot comprehend that education is more than just a degree; if we cannot grasp the fact that proper education sharpens the mind, develops the power of critical thinking, and enables the person to dissect situations with logic and rationality that can lead to better judgments — if we in our own lives do not appreciate such thinking, why blame Afridi and his bunch of losers?
For years, we have actually smiled when told that the unpredictability of our team is a good thing? No it’s not. Unpredictability means you’re not trained enough, disciplined enough, practised enough and coached enough to perform consistently. Winning on a fluke is not something to be proud of. But a deeply ingrained abhorrence of anything scientific, rational or disciplined disallows us to recognise unpredictability as handicap.
Ditto for the culture of nepotism. When the chairman of the cricket board is accountable only to the Prime Minister, and when the biggest qualification for him to be appointed to this position is the fact that the Prime Minister has to like him, then nepotism will travel all the way down to the playing eleven. Then there will be a “Karachi group” and a “Lahore group” in the team. Then there will be as many factions within the team as there are within the Pakistan Muslim League. Then people like Shahid Afridi will flourish.
But wait. Something does not add up.
If all this were completely true, and we were a true reflection of Shahid Afridi, we would not have produced a Sana Mir (as pointed out so eloquently by Abbas Nasir in a daily publication). If we were a true reflection of Afridi, we would not have celebrated the amazing victories of our courageous women’s team; we would not have Pakistani women flying fighter jets and commercial airplanes; we would not have had our exceptionally talented ladies Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Malala Yousufzai winning Oscars and Nobels; we would not have had our competent women proudly wearing the rank of a general, or fighting elections, or scaling the highest mountains.
We share many failings with Shahid Afridi, but as a nation we are better than him. Unlike him, we are learning from our mistakes; we are fighting the demons we spawned to carve out a better future for our children; we are reforming the institutions we damaged in the past; we are holding ourselves and our leaders to account for their deeds and misdeeds and we are gradually embracing the dictates of a brave new world out there.
In this ongoing struggle, we yearn to break free from a mindset that Shahid Afridi and his ilk represent. The yearning is translating into actions that would hopefully shatter the medieval traditions that shackle us; that would transform the archaic thinking that holds us back; and that would smash the glass ceiling that fetters our women.
So Mr Afridi: Thank you for entertaining us for two decades. Now fade away into the twilight because Pakistan is marching on, and you’re on the wrong side of history. - Express Tribune