NO MIRACLES FOR PAK CRICKET SHORT OF PURGING D-COMPANY
TAALIBAAN RUINED PAK POLITICS AND D-COMPANY RUINED PAK CRICKET.
Recently the great Kapil Dev was quoted in the press making an emotional appeal to his one-time arch rival Imran Khan to step in and clean up Pak cricket. But not even the Gods can save Pak cricket from its current quagmire which is only setting like super-concrete to a point of absolute no-return.
WHILE PAK POLITICS CULTIVATED JEHADI-TERROR, PAK CRICKET CULTIVATED THE TOXIC AND NOTORIOUS D-COMPANY:
It was in the 70s and the 80s that the notorious D-company headed by the former Mumbai Mafia don turned international fugitive terrorist DAWOOD IBRAHIM started laying his tentacles into the murky world of cricket betting. And his mega-dreams got a big kick when Bhaarath miraculously won the 1983 Prudential One Day World Cup and suddenly the world of one-day cricket exploded into the Subcontinent. The world of cricket, which had been a gentleman's game of 5-day test cricket that far had now suddenly transformed into a bookie's paradise. The various vagaries of this game like the toss, pitch, in-form and out-of-form players lent themselves to make it a tantalizing prospect for bettors. And this is where the opportunistic D-company mafia stepped in and unleashed its army of bookies on the cricket pitches of the Subcontinent. And of course, it was aided and abetted by insiders no less than the likes of former Bhaarateeya skipper Mohammed Azharuddhin and left a bitter trail in its wake in terms of ruined reputations and careers as future events would painfully reveal when the benign image of the late ex-skipper of the Proteas, Hanse Cronje, was shredded to tatters by his own bookie dreams gone horribly awry.
And while the D-company continued to make merry and shore up its coffers and also the pockets of many devious Subcontinental politicians and cricket board Mandarins, Dawood consolidated his residence in Dubai and led the life of an uncrowned monarch when many powerful people from the Subcontinental political and cricketing establishments and also its entertainment industry, Bollywood, regularly called on him and fawned on him, pleading with him for opportunities in tinsel town, cricket, and politics as they indulged hedonistic pleasures in mega-parties lavished on them by their criminal host. Dawood's political fortunes, consequently, also saw a heady rise and by now he had cultivated an aura of absolute power and had big powerful friends in the Subcontinent.
And that's when he made is first big miscalculation fueled by the arrogance of invincibility and his deep hatred for the Bhaarateeya establishment on being ejected from his city of paradise, MUMBAI: His involvement in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. And that's when the Bhaarateeya political establishment was forced to turn their collective heats on him and suddenly to Dawood's chagrin, many former political cronies became indifferent and cold and some even started baying for his blood.
With the relentless international pressure building on the Dubai Govt, fugitive Dawood shifted base to Karachi Pakistan, aided and abetted heavily by the ISI (Pak secret service) and powerful international Jehadis. One of his earliest efforts was to bring on back on track his bread and butter, the bookie empire, that had taken a serious wobble in the events that led him to abdicate his Dubai throne. He made a genius of a move to link himself permanently to the Pak cricket establishment. And what better way than marriage itself. He quickly solemnized his daughter's wedding to ex-Pak skipper Javed Miandad's son and after that his bookie-fortunes once again began rapidly soaring north. Dawood slowly established a stranglehold on Pak cricket to the point that nothing moves today in terms of selection and other important decisions unless and until sanctioned by the D-company. Why do I say that. The involvement of almost the entire Pak cricket team and many of its officials, save a few exceptions here and there, in betting and match fixing scandals that erupt time and time and time again is ample evidence in this regard. It takes no rocket science to decipher this.
And it was during this time that 20-20 cricket torched into the Subcontinental scene with Bhaarat and Pak featuring in the summit clash of the inaugural T20 World Cup and suddenly the possibilities for the D-company seemed almost limitless. T20 was a even better option for the bookies than the jaded 50 over ODIs that now looked tired and lengthy in front of this new rock and roll star of cricketing format. T20 had now done to ODI what it itself had done to good old gentleman of test cricket. Then came IPL and all of Dawood's earlier connections with corrupt BCCI mandarins matured into a financial tsunami for the D-company. The bookie check-out tillers now hummed at an all time high and fugitive Dawood was laughing all the way to his Karachi banks.
WHAT WILL POOR AND CLEAN IMRAAN DO IN THIS REGARD.
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