His Master’s Voice

Mr. Ali Bacher, the CEO of South African Cricket Board has admittedly known and consorted with bookies including a gentleman named "R." In an inquiry on the match fixing by his team captain (Hansie Cronje) implicating more of his team players and in front of a South African judge, Mr. Bacher, could come up with the following in his defense - World Cup matches were fixed - on concrete evidence as strong and solid as... Majid Khan and his cousin

Javed Burki think so.

Now, let me see if the questions is - why did you not do anything to prevent match fixing in your team when you, the grand poobah knew about this for

so long? And why did you let it continue? The logical answer to these and

many other serious questions facing the South African cricket OF COURSE is

that Javed Akhtar was in the match fixers pockets - as evidenced by another

sneaky conversation that Mr. Bacher had with another paragon of honesty

and integrity - the legendary match fixer/gambler/bookie who was a casual

acquaintance of Mr. Bacher, Mr. "R."

Now this is not new for Mr. Bacher. He is well versed in the old tactics of making the issues muddled to skate through all the various and heavy wrong doings that he has ever done by blaming someone else and opening another front and shouting at the top of his lungs to make that the issue rather then what he himself or his charges have done. Mr. Bacher could not answer the questions of his implication by Bob Woolmer and others so he has decided to shift the focus and the game to another field and play with his rules.

Now to pull this charade off, Mr. Bacher needed some support from people he

knew he could use to point unsubstantiated fingers at their own to bolster

his case. Surely, anyone with half a brain would not fall for this age-old

ruse? No... into the breach come the Larry, Moe and Curly of the intellectual

World - Majid Khan, Javed Burki and Mr. "R."

Majid and Javed are easy to understand. They are the greatest examples of

bootlicking in the World - the Brown Sahibs DELUXE. They have been shrill in

their words and deeds to implicate anyone associated with Pakistan cricket -

with and without foundation. They were born in the wrong country at the wrong time. They aspired, and actually still do, to have been country gents in a "civilized" World. Having hated themselves all these years for having

been born with the wrong skin color and the wrong country they have aspired

to be whiter than white . And if they could not do that, they have always

loved to be of service to their masters - in this case to masters twice

removed.

Majid has this old habit of putting people of lower station down. If he

is not kicking relatives of other players from hospitality stations, he is

quick to cut various players down to size who in his mind may have done more

for Pakistan cricket than he did. He feels important with his friend Tony

Lewis at the head of the MCC having lunch at Lord's or at Wimbledon - another bastion of the high-brow gentry that he so very much wants to identify with. He and his cronies firmly believe that the only people of integrity are the ones that have wealth and have the Cambridge education. The rest of these players that play for the country who do not have all this are riff-raff. People who do not come from landed, aristocratic families are wont to do evil because they do not have money. He is known for withdrawing the claim of Hassan Raza for being the youngest test player of all time because he thought that a radiologist wrist x-ray report meant that the youngster was a few days older than his stated age. Making a mockery of Pakistan cricket and causing huge guffaws from his masters in the bars at Leeds and Swansea. A world-class radiologist was quoted the next week, from that incident, saying, in essence, that whoever made a decision on a player's exact age by this method was completely wrong and there was no way an x-ray of the wrist can determine the exact age of person within days. But, Majid chose to believe the sounds in his head despite the actual evidence provided by Hasan and his family. For, they must be cheats - his name not being John or Harry.

Majid has been against the players for a while right through his reign as

the PCB CEO. His was the most fractured relationship in the series of fractured relationships between players and the PCB head honchos. The PCB has been the bane of Pakistan cricket due to people like Majid and Burki. They have tried to run the office as if they were vice-roys sent from harrow to lord over these impious fellows from Gujranwala and Multan. If they ever tried to do their jobs rather than trying to crush the players, to show them who was boss, they would have helped make Pakistan cricket reach its true potential. Majid immediately after becoming CEO started implying that he would crush the players and that he would bring them back to earth. He forgot or remembered too well his antics when he was a player. He did two revolts against the PCB and against his captain and succeeded in getting his way both times. Maybe his own peccadilloes ruled his ruse when he went on to the other side.

Here, though, he has gone too far. To become a pawn in the game that Bacher

is playing he has become the fool who tried to burn his own house down due

to his loyalty to his masters. He does not have a scintilla of proof and

nor does he have an iota of credibility with the people who can see the ruse

for what it is.

The less said by the respectable Mr. "R" the better. He, who is a bookie, is

now the expert in trying to implicate a Pakistani umpire on a couple of decisions that went against South Africa. Well, two things: one, Hansie Cronje could possibly have something to do with losing to England 2-1 with and without his match-fixing predilections and, two, If giving a couple of decisions in a test match were wrong then let us investigate Messers Doctrove , Cowie, Davis and Orchard to boot and what about David Constant (Sikander Bakht 1987), Shepard (Inzi and Afridi at WC 99 Final) and Dickie Bird (WC 1987 semi-final - Imran Khan).

It is a travesty that we have people like Ali Bacher (with his stooges, Larry, Moe and Curly) who have been administrators for good teams and have brought them to ruin - it is quite another to allow them to get away with these shameless shenanigans to divert attention from their evil deeds and throw dirt at others without warrant - even if fueled by their vessels who cut their own noses inspite of their faces.