Shoaib Akhtar -duplicity with gall

During the just concluded tour Shoaib Akhtar, tried to shed his bad boy image and project himself both as a team man and as a commercial viable celebrity. However, being Shoaib, his actions seeped duplicity.

As a step to establish his ‘team man’ image he was all diplomacy and tact. He went as far as to come out with ‘supportive’ statements about his team mates. Unfortunately, his insistence on playing even though he was recovering from an illness left his team a bowler short and crippled its effectiveness. Underneath his professed desire to play was the calculation that since Younis was unwilling he could swing the captaincy his way. Fortunately, the team management saw through his duplicity and let him play in order to expose his ‘fitness’.

Parallel to his play for the Captaincy, he was attempting to establish his commercial viability. His calculated attempts at visiting orphanages were nothing but a crass attempt to establish himself as a ‘caring’ and a ‘humane’ celebrity. Similarly his visits to the nigh-clubs were nothing more than an exercise at cultivating an image of ‘work hard and play harder’ celebrity.

The profile of a ‘humane’ and ‘caring’ celebrity who also ‘work harder and play harder’ is a much desired profile. By projecting himself so, Shoaib thought he could land some more juicy contracts and crown his exercise in duplicity by landing a role in a Bollywood movie.

Fortunately the Indian media excepting for the obligatory sound bites gave him a wide berth. Having failed to land the much desire Bollywood film Shoaib had to return to Pakistan vowing that from now he would focus on cricket.

However the lure to make quick bucks before his career implodes, has made Shoaib turn his attention to wooing the Australians.

Here is how he is wooing them.

Pakistan pace ace Shoaib Akhtar said if the curators
produced quick wickets, India stood almost no chance.

"They are
good on slow, dusty, lifeless wickets. But if Australia makes good fast pitches
where the ball has carry they have a huge chance of winning. I hope Australia
wins," Akhtar said in the wake of Pakistan's recent 1-0 series loss to India.

Undoubtedly a fair and balanced view but check out this ‘alteration of perception’.

"We did all right against them. We just did not have enough
match-winners to beat them, but Australia have the match-winners.

The well known fact was Pakistan just escaped being ‘white-washed’ in the series. Let us leave it at that for now and look at his attempt to pander to the Aussie media.

"What people are overlooking is the age of this Indian side.
Most of their batsmen are in their mid-30s. This age is not good to be playing
pace.

This undoubtedly is the ‘clincher’.

"Guys like Tendulkar, (V.V.S.) Laxman, Dravid, their
reflexes are not what they used to be."

When you contrast his statements in India with his current observations, it is clear that Shoaib has astounding gall which goes with his duplicity. Mercifully the Aussies are a pragmatic lot and can be trusted to give him the boot.