MERRY-GO-ROUND

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Hyderabad: 25 Dec 2022: In my three-decade old career as a journalist — a span marked for tumultuousness in the sport we consider our second religion — what one has observed is a recurring pattern. With change in governments, the system is uprooted so-to-speak to facilitate hangers-on that the change fetches.
Shehbaz Sharif, who effectively wrote himself out of all the money laundering cases against him and his son whilst escaping indictment on the very day he suddenly became prime minister, had been too busy to sack Rameez Raja (even though he admitted in a function recently to getting match tickets from Raja’s Commissioner dad back in the day).
So it’s not really about whether Raja was a success or failure — to be sure, am no fan of the average cricketer that he was but what can you really achieve in a year or so in the turbulent and fragile world of Pakistan cricket?
The done thing is to have your own people at the top and dominating the firm. So granddaddy Najam Sethi is back in the saddle with all his minions, any constitutional fiat be damned. The downside of this circus is that it will remain good only for as long as their patrons survive in power. Pretty much like how we play our cricket these days.
The fact is Sethi could not have been denied a hand on the golden goose again — after all, he has manfully served the Sharifs particularly in the last year or so with his sweeping, if distorted and patently false narratives, to get here. Behind the scenes, he had been begging for it.
Wish someone could take out Jinnah’s frame from here. He doesn’t deserve this farce.
Propriety prevents me from commenting much on the other gent. But everyone who knows a little bit about the “administrative” side of things knows how and why he is where he is. In some ways, he’s more powerful than even incoming and outgoing PCB chiefs.
Brace up for more of Unlucky Pakistani Circus!

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