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Wounded Tiger: The History Of Cricket In PakistanStock informationGeneral Fields
Special Fields
DescriptionThe country of Pakistan was born out of the deep trauma of Partition from India in 1947. Its national cricket team evolved under similarly chaotic and desperate circumstances. Initially dispersed, overlooked, underfunded and weak, the national team grew to become a major force in world cricket. Since the early days of the Raj, when cricket was first played on the subcontinent between British officers and Indian soldiers, cricket has always been entwined with national identity, and came to represent to Pakistan its status as a world power. Bristling, aggressive, passionate and outspoken, players such as Fazal Mahmood, A.H. Kardar, Hanif Mohammed, Zaheer Abbas, Wasim Akram, Abdul Qadir, and Imran Khan have inspired fear and awe in equal measure as cricketers of the highest calibre. In recent times it has been revealed that members of the national cricket team had been paid by bookmakers to manipulate results. This match-fixing crisis was a catastrophe for a country already facing massive problems from terrorism, corruption and poverty. Pakistan's status as a failing state was exactly mirrored by this disaster for its national game. Author descriptionPeter Oborne is a regular commentator on politics for television, and chief political editor of the Daily Telegraph. He is the author of several previous books including the acclaimed Alastair Campbell: New labour and the Rise of the Media Class, The Rise of Political Lying, The Triumph of the Political Class, and Basil D'Oliveira, Cricket and Conspiracy: The Untold Story which won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award in 2004. |