Good riddance Shoaib
Following on from Dave's post about Shoiab, take a look at this Pakistani cricket blog that I read sometimes (is cricket blogging taking over my life?!). It appears that public opinion in Pakistan is turning against Shoaib in a big way, and given what has been reported about his latest changing room scuffle, it's difficult not to agree. At least Pakistan have acted quickly and decisively in sending him home.
I hope that Pakistan now look to the future and ignore Shoaib's (no doubt extremely loud) calls for a recall via the media.
2 comments:
To my mind, the speed and decisiveness of this decision only goes to show how weak their previous "banning" of Shoaib was for using banned steroids - in other sports, that would be a life ban. It is as if they ran out of patience, but this only goes to show how negligent and indulgent their defence of him previously was.
Does this raise questions about whether they should have banned him outright previously? It does, to my mind.
At a time when drugs in sport is a growing issue to the extent that some sports are effectively discredited by the use and indulgence/incompetence of the governing bodies (baseball, or cycling), cricket's attitude, certainly in the case of Pakistan, but possibly elsewhere, looks as lax as some of these other sports.
I appreciate this is now off the original topic, but does this demand a co-ordinated action by the ICC on the matter, before cricket becomes discredited as well?
Yes, but it's interesting just how powerless the ICC is - they can put new things to their members but unless it's backed by a majority (two-thirds I think) it doesn't go through. So it becomes a game of politics to ensure nothing adverse to your country's interests gets through.
The ICC can only propose harsher sentences for drugs cheats, but it would be interesting to see if Pakistan would back it - I think it would be extremely unlikely. You would expect the other nations to all support harsher drug penalties so that wouldn't matter, but if Pakistan were to offer India a high profile game to increase the Indian coffers, they would get their support, and it spirals from there, making it tricky to push things anything really ground breaking through.
There lies my frustration with the whole internation cricket administration set up!
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