MEDIA GAG

‘Poor old Diego [Maradona]. For so many years we have told him repeatedly, “You’re a God”, “You’re a star”, “You’re our salvation,” that we forgot to tell him the most important thing: “You’re a man”.’ Jorge Valdano

The blog was reminded of this quote while listening to Shoaib Akhtar’s retirement speech. Throughout his career, Akhtar has divided opinions more than Lady Gaga: on one hand were the Akhtar fanboys who considered him a fast-bowling God, and must have welled up while listening to that. Then there were those who have considered him an injury-prone, unreliable, past-it prima donna who was just trying to get a sentimental spot in the first XI, and his retirement – like so many Pakistani retirements before – was only temporary.

The blog has always been somewhere in the middle. While appreciating Akhtar for the force of nature he was (on the rare occasions he was fit and/or firing), he will always be judged along the same lines as a Mike Tyson or Paul Gascoigne: all tributes are tinged with a hint of disappointment of what could have been. Growing up in a country which didn’t appreciate the two W’s (at least when they were playing), Shoaib was bound to never receive unconditional love.

Even in his retirement speech, it left some unfulfilled. After all, a bit of blubbing and more emotion would have been appreciated (although it would again have drawn dividing lines). Oscar winners cry over a piece of gold, why can’t our sportsman shed a tear for a decade or more of memories? This is why the blog always prefers a Roanldo or a Favre to an Afridi.

 

Press Conferences

Of course, retirement speeches have their own place in the drama of sports – but the blog has always preferred a full-blooded rant to them. In the English-football following world, Kevin Keegan’s ‘luv it’ breakdown has become part of folklore – even though it wasn’t nearly as bad as later accounts would stress. Similarly, there must have been many in American sports (but the blog has never had the greatest interest or knowledge of them).

Sticking to football though, this blog (or a whole series of them) could have been written  for the man mentioned in the quote at the start. Diego Maradona, in every aspect, is an extraordinary man. And unlike Shoaib Akhtar, the blog has placed himself firmly in his fanboys club. His rant after the qualification for the World Cup was a masterpiece fuelled by anger, redemption and bronca. Some might find it ‘distasteful’; they can all be referred to Stephen Fry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIbQbGq-jIE&feature=related

But even El Diego cannot challenge the joy of watching a stereotypical Italian in his 50s defying all laws of football management, and laying into his players that would blow the minds of journalists who write of crises when they get second-hand reports of a player not being in love with his manager. Or perhaps, like Mourinho a decade and a half later, he believed that the best way to get the best out of his players was to humiliate them in public. Whatever the case may have been, Giovanni Trapattoni left Bayen Munich by the end of that season, having shown the world that just because it’s your second language does not mean you can’t deliver a barely comprehensible and magnificent rant in it. 

 

 Mind our language

Anyone who has had the misfortune of watching TV in Pakistan over the past decade would be familiar with Meera – or ‘filumstar Meera’, as she is more commonly known (you didn’t think you’d ever read those words here, did you?). For those lucky enough to be unaware of her presence, she is a vain, attention-seeking, obnoxious media-whore – the epitome of the twenty-first century ‘celebrity’ who is famous for being famous. A child of the culture that believes any publicity is good publicity. This is not supposed to be an attack on her person, rather this is supposed to put the following sentence into context: Despite all her apparent character flaws, whenever she is to be parodied on Pakistani television it is her inability to speak ‘good’ English which is lampooned. This might seem, at best, a trivial matter in a country where more than three-quarters of the population cannot speak that language, but it is lapped up by the targeted audience. What this says about the Pakistani middle and upper classes is something that a social scientist might be better equipped to deal with; the blog doesn’t have the required credentials nor the desire to delve further into it.

It is with this as the background, does one understand why Pakistani players have (reportedly) been terrified of being awarded man-of-the-match award. Take the Akmal brothers, for example. Umar seems confident and articulate in his post-match speeches, while Kamran (as he so often does) looks like a rabbit in the headlights. The difference being that one is speaking in a language he is completely comfortable with, the other is not. The blog has always, quite strongly, believed that since we don’t expect our orators to be able to play match-winning innings, we shouldn’t expect our cricketers to do something which isn’t part of their job.

It is in the midst of this that we have our knight-in-shining-armour. So what if you aren’t a speaker as fluent as Imran. It doesn’t mean you can’t have the confidence to deal with the questions. Your grammar is secondary, the only thing you have to make sure of is whether you get your point across, and if possible, to do it with a sense of humour. Saeed Ajmal does all that, and much more.

Ajmal’s interviews have made him a cult hero. The blog would prefer to believe that in his case the world is laughing with him, rather than at him. He has the attitude of a man who realizes that he isn’t sitting in his GCSE; the interview becomes something the player enjoys, rather than dreads. And with that ease – and confidence at its peak – the interviewee becomes the sort of couldn’t-give-a-toss, I-am-here-to-enjoy-myself personality that us fans love. It doesn’t matter if he sneaks Urdu into his sentences, nor does it matter that he changes his accent randomly; what matters is that he is funny and gets his point across. So let us take a moment to bask in the magnificence of the great man himself.

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The blog would like to pre-empt the refusal to apologize for the length of this article. It would be recommendable to read this in more than one sitting if you possess the attention span of a goldfish. See number 3 for a detailed response. For a more immediate response though, or if you suffer from a masochistic disorder then you might want to follow the blog on twitter.com/mediagag