After watching the second day’s play between England and the West Indies, I flipped on to the Twenty20 match between Australia and Pakistan. I was deeply disturbed when after each Kamran Akmal boundary, the producers chose to show Ijaz Butt sitting in an easy chair next to his wife in the VIP section of the Dubai Sports City Stadium. The PCB chief certainly hasn’t missed any meals in the last 20 years while many people in his country are starving.
However, the more pressing problem with this picture was his missing-toothed grin. Butt was clearly pleased with the scene before him. Pakistan was sticking it to the Aussies, who refuse to tour his country. Yes, Butt still has a mighty big chip on his shoulder about that and many other things. Apparently this chip is weighing him down in his seat and is making him unable to get up and finding out some answers as to what happened on March 3 of this year.
Yes, it has been more than two months now since the Sri Lankan cricketers were attacked in Lahore on the way to the ground for what was supposed to be the third day’s play in their second test match against Pakistan. To date, not a single person has been held accountable for the events of that day. No one in Pakistan’s military, Lahore’s police force, or the PCB has been fired or forced to resign. Much more importantly, no one has been arrested and charged with conspiring to plan and/or carry out the attack.
Why is Ijaz Butt allowed to sit in the easy chair when he should be in the hot seat? The lack of leadership in the PCB is indicative of the greater problems in Pakistan as a whole. The whole country is corrupt from top to bottom.
It was pleasing to see Chris Broad sitting on the balcony at Lord’s today. For him, life is moving on since he was caught in the crossfire. Unfortunately, Ijaz Butt also appears to be moving on and living the good life as though nothing ever happened.
