For seven hours, as he sat on-board a routine Emirates flight from Dubai to London, Zulqarnain Haider was alone with his thoughts.
While his fellow passengers worked on their laptops, flirted with the Cabin Crew or dozed through in-flight movies, Haider enjoyed – if that is the right word – a rare period of peace. Given what we now know of the 72 hours that preceded his flight, those airborne hours were the first chance he’d had to grab a moment of calm and solitude.
And the last.
Because by the time Haider emerged looking pale and vacant in front of the Heathrow flash bulbs, things had changed. He had changed. No longer was he just a young wicketkeeper with a fondness for Facebook. He was something altogether more important. He was a Pakistani without a price.
“I just didn’t want to sell my country. ” said Haider on arriving in London. “The country is like your mother and if you sell that, you are nothing.”
Quite a quote isn’t it? As a defence of sporting integrity it was so succinct and noble that it almost broke your heart.
Here was a man, as he explained last night, who wanted one thing in his life – to win games for Pakistan. And eventually, after years of struggle and achievement, he’d finally earned that opportunity, only to discover this most rancid of realities: winning a game for Pakistan – the focus of his life – could also be the end of his life. No wonder he looked pale.
“I was not confident enough to speak to the team management about it because I didn’t want to get my other teammates into trouble. I did not do what I was asked to do, so this is the reason I left. He [the match-fixer] said if you work with us, we will give you a lot of money. If you go back home, we will kill you and your family also.”‘
It is in the reaction to Haider’s decision, though, that a personal tragedy has become to public scandal.
Take first the comments of Pakistan’s Sports Minister Ijaz Hussain Jakhrani – who called Haider “weak and scared” and not fit for national duty. Or the Pakistan Cricket Board, who yesterday suspended his central contract and labelled him an “embarrassment.” This is too serious a subject to dwell on the irony of any organisation headed by Ijaz Butt using such language to describe others. And anyway, the real issue here isn’t the farcical PCB. It’s the International Cricket Council.
Presented with the most rare, fleeting and precious of opportunities – a potential whistle-blower – the ICC should have sent officers straight to London to meet with Haider. Its entire resources should have been directed toward protecting and reassuring him.
Even if Haider had proved to be as unreliable as his critics are claiming, the ICC was surely obliged to find out first. He is a desperate man looking for a sanctuary – literally – but the ICC have done nothing to provide the safety or security Haider is seeking. Or worse than nothing – they have left it to the PCB.
“Clearly this is in the first instance a team matter for Pakistan cricket but the ICC is willing to provide assistance to the PCB and the player,” said Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive. “We understand his plight if reports are indeed true, but we can only help if he is willing to engage with us.”
With so much to lose, it is no surprise that Pakistani cricket is shunning Haider. But with so much to gain, it is mystifying why the ICC is doing the same.
