Thursday, April 05, 2007

Honouring Bob


Being Pakistani it is natural for your Blogger to be a keen cricketing fan. The mortifying defeat of our national team by Ireland at Sabina Park, Kingston, was a bitter pill to swallow. But what followed a day later– the tragic death of Bob Woolmer - was a much greater calamity.

Before his death it was becoming increasingly clear that Woolmer's professional expertise was not being properly utilised by the mule headed and increasingly dictatorial Inzamam and the lightweight currently occupying the position of PCB chairman. The moment Naseem Ashraf became head of PCB he effectively sidelined Woolmer (who is on record as having despondently stated :"Since the resignation of the last Chairman any views I have had have not been wanted! The new Chairman certainly has his own way").

Like most cricketing fans I had tremendous respect for Woolmer’s coaching abilities – he had widely been acknowledged as the leading light of the international coaching world. But more than that, like many other Pakistanis, I had come to develop an unusual fondness for this genial, soft spoken and gentlemanly person.

Present reasoning would suggest that either Woolmer died a natural death brought upon by the shock of his team’s defeat or the unfortunate man was gruesomely murdered by an international set of villains – most likely of sub-continental origins.

In either case he died while serving the cause of our national cricket. So it is only appropriate that Woolmer’s services to Pakistani cricket be properly acknowledged.

For my part, I can think of no better way of honouring Woolmer’s memory than by renaming Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium (named after a nasty half-witted Libyan dictator who still remains clueless about cricket) to Woolmer Stadium.

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4 comments:

Teeth Maestro said...

May his soul rest in peace - he was the better side of the shabby PCB administration team that we have. Truly put all his effort to improve the team and he did do a good job, only had if Shoaib and Asif not done drugs we might have ourselves a better chance. You seriously cant blame the World Cup disaster on him - like some of hawks like Miandad were try to pin it on his before his death.

Woolmer you did us proud

Anonymous said...

I am not surprised to see another pakistani assuming that woolmer's murderer was of south asian origin and totally disregarding a great player like inzamam who won so many matches for pakistan to honour a gora.because people of white skin arre all angles and us pakistanis crooks so it must be very wrong to asume that woolmer had any connections with the dark side of cricket which hansie cronje admitted to while playing under woolmer.but no lets change the name of the stadium from qaddafi because qaddafi is not white he is a bad bad dictator and woolmer just one of the angels who took over and murdered south africans ..so what if qaddafi payed for the whole damn thing,he is not white so honoring him will not satisfy our gora inferiority complex.lets lick their shoes and cry our hearts out until some gora calls us civilised.so what if the economist blames the whole thing on pakistan w/o any proof.it is a civilised white paper not uncivilised like us dirty colored ppl..shame on you

A Different Drum said...

Reason,

If Bob Woolmer had indeed been murdered, my assumption that it would have South Asian connections is based on some logic. The home of cricketing match-fixing is supposedly Mumbai. If I recall correctly even Hansie Cronje’s links were traced back to the Sub-continent. Should we all shut eyes to the fact that illegal gambling in places like Mumbai, Lahore, etc runs into billions of dollars a year and has serious criminal connections?

Bob Woolmer could have been green, blue, brown, black or white but the fact remains is that he was regarded as possibly the most gifted coach in the cricketing world. Once he arrived in Pakistan his personality was there out in the open. Yes, many of us truly liked what we saw. Enough said!

Coming to Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi – for the past thirty-eight years this man has ruled Libya. With all its oil revenue (estimated at some US$ 80 billion per annum) and limited population (less than 6 million people) has Libya become a Singapore (or even a Dubai)? Obviously, the man is a total disaster for his people.

And, Okay, the people of Libya may have paid for the Lahore Stadium, but did they have any choice in the matter?

I guess we might as well be living in different planets as I find myself unable to judge people by the colour of their skin or country of their origin. My greatest living hero happens to be Nelson Mandela - not just for leading the cause of justice in South Africa but by demonstrating to the rest of us what power ‘forgiveness’ can hold.

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