Cricket Special Report: Awards of the Year 2010 (Part I)
As the World looks forward to another year, a decade of the 21st century wraps up. As 2010 winds to a close, people will be looking back and introspection will be underway.
How can one judge if the year was a complete success or a complete failure? Maybe hand out a couple of awards before the award season rolls out all over the world.
The year 2010, hands down was dominated by Pakistan. Whether it was the natural calamities, the politics or the cricket, Pakistan ruled the news bulletin for all the wrong reasons.
Lifetime Achievement Award (for being in the news for 12 months)
The most prestigious award goes to Pakistan. No brain teasers here, there were no competitors in this category as well. Pakistan had the most amazing year. They lost all the One Day series this year, four to be exact in the calendar year 2010 and recently
snatched a new feather of the Kiwi bird in their green caps, as they lost the Twenty20 three match series from another worst team this year, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754.
However, they did themselves some good as they managed to draw two Test series but stuck to their “no-win in 2010 policy” as they did not win a single Test match.
However, this has nothing to do with the Lifetime achievement award. The main reason that they are being honoured is for being in the news for all the twelve months of the year. Even in the last few days of the year 2010, they are losing the matches. What
a great way to look ahead and make resolutions.
The year started with 26 Pakistani players being shunned by the Indian Premier League (IPL) over a political hue and cry between India and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ijaz-Butt-c64128 led Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) were also in the news for various reasons mainly because Butt
was found to be working as a clown at a circus whose acronym was similar to the Board.
As Pakistan had already lost to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 was hungry in the final ODI in Perth and decided to munch on the ball. Not an offence, in my humble opinion, the poor guy was hungry for crying out
loud. However, the ICC decides to ban him for two Twenty20 internationals on the charges of ball-tampering.
A visibly embarrassed Afridi said about the incident that “I just wanted to win us a game but this was the wrong way to do it."
The Test captain, Salman Butt of course knew the right way as Pakistan highlighted the headlines this summer.
A British tabloid accused Pakistan’s “former” captain Butt and fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir of spot-fixing, that too in the middle of a tour of England. Everyone knows what happened after this so no point glorifying it once again.
However, what the cricket fans might have forgotten that PCB banned Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan from the national team in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/March-c74391 on the grounds being undisciplined along with Shoaib Malik and Naved-ul-Hasan who were handed one year bans. Yousaf and Younis
came back in the squad by October; they only needed the time to find themselves.
Meanwhile, Shoaib Malik flew over to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 to marry Tennis star Sania Mirza. More media frenzy and bringing “two nations closer” thing followed. But no publicity is bad publicity, right?
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