Road to bleachers
And you thought Shoaib Akhtar, the tear-away Pakistani bowler would walk into the setting sun whimpering. Knowing his love for fighting till the finish, those who know Shoaib knew he would go out with a flourish, not fizzle. And even after-retirement, he managed to ruffle a few feathers.
His insider accounts of the goings-on in Pakistani cricket, the dressing room, players hob-nobbing with bookies, ball-tampering, his humble upbringing and ofcourse, his adversaries, made quite a flutter in the press even before it was out in the form of a book. As a result at the launch of his autobiography, aptly titled, Controversially Yours, he had a lot of clarification to make.
Media reports had alleged that he had called Indian batting maestro, Sachin Tendulkar, “a spring-chicken” of sorts and said Rahul Dravid wasn’t a good enough “finisher.” But clarifications aside, and appeals to “read it before you judge”, he opened another can of worms saying all teams across the globe fixed matches and tampered balls. He particularly tore into his Pakistani seniors. “Right from Sarfaraz Nawaz, Waseem Akram, Waqar Younis, you name them, they all ‘took care’ of the ball. Other teams too did it, bowlers chewed gum, applied oil to their hair for the same reason,” says Shoaib.
A particular incident that he narrated about ex-cricketer and Pakistani coach, Javed Miandad, brought peals of laughter from the audience. “Those days there were no cameras and fourth umpires scrutinising matches, while bowling, during a break, when umpires hung their coats while having lunch, Javed quietly changed the old ragged ball with a newer one,” he narrated.
Mentioning his early childhood and how as a kid while watching the Pakistani team practice at Rawalpindi, he swore to play along with them some day. And he got there in five years flat.
And, how he got there is another journey. He studied for a while and there too his penchant for getting into trouble got the better of him. He narrates an incident from his early days. “Our professor of Islamiya was once going to apply for a leave. I volunteered to deliver the leave application for him and then got him to sign on another paper where I prepared a proforma authorising me to teach on his behalf. I taught his classes for a month before I was discovered.” And then he was rusticated.
Growing up wasn’t easy, says Shoaib and apart coming from humbles backgrounds, the humiliation that adversity brought along, egged Shaoib. “I liked it when people tried belittling me.” One of the five children of his parents, he hardly had any backing from the family. “My institution was the roads. I’ve spent half my life on roads, the rest in hotels and in controversies.”
Despite a dodgy knee, humble background and adversaries, Shoaib’s is a story dreams are made of. And he was lucky enough to live it.
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