Author(s): Peter Oborne

Sport

The 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.
By telling the history of Pakistan cricket, Wounded Tiger, Peter Oborne's epic examination of a country's obsession, unravels the deep links between the game and the present-day condition of Pakistan. It shows how the stresses in the Pakistan national sports mirror the stresses within the country itself. Pakistan cricket began as a manifestation of empire, then became an expression of national assertion, but since 9/11, the American war on terrorism, the Karachi bomb blast and the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, it has become today a symbol of collapse. This sweeping and intense narrative history roots Pakistan cricket in a context of tribal conflict, sectarian hatred, administrative incompetence, mob violence, match-rigging and the growing terror threat. But the essential message is perhaps also one of celebration and also hope, chronicling the genius of so many Pakistan cricketers, and the consuming national passion for the game, arguing that the national cricket team can re-invent itself, attain fresh heights and become a metaphor for national recovery.