Seniors discounts, respect from teenagers, and cricket – a game of unity in a war torn country – it can’t be all bad, writes Geoff Lawson
I have corresponded recently from the balmy breezes of the Caribbean Islands and the blustery coolness of London’s Olympic venue, from the teeming streets of Mumbai and the world’s worst traffic in Dhaka. Cricket has taken me to those places, which vary so greatly in religion, geography, forms of governance, ideologies and supply of clean water.
This month I accepted another cricket assignment, this time as consultant coach for the Afghan team, which is competing in the Asia Cup tournament. The assignment has taken me to a country not known for its burgeoning interest in sport – Malaysia. It’s a wonderful country and the capital, Kuala Lumpur (KL), is a very modern city by any yardstick. The road system in and around the metropolis puts Australian cities to shame. Public transport by bus and Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) makes moving people to and from work and recreation an efficient and minor time consuming exercise, and it’s cheap.
Respect for Age
I tried a seven-station trip for around 60 cents, which took me to KL’s famous man-made landmark, the Petronas Towers. This building is literally a shining example of what humans can do when there are barrels full of petrol dollars coupled with an overpowering will to erect phallic monuments to themselves. You have to book an elevator time and pay a fee to go up the 475 metres, so popular is the attraction.
The respect for age is something that, although sadly declining in western society, still holds importance in the east
On the day I was there, the ticket queue was moving dreadfully slowly due to the extensive politeness of the staff who were engaging in conversation with ticket buyers of varying accents and ethnicities – it’s hard to get stroppy at that.
When I reached the head of the queue I had my first experience of the reverence for age in that Asian society. I consider myself fairly fit for my age, maybe a couple of kilos of excess but nothing that the summer won’t erase, a bit grey around the temples (you can’t choose your DNA yet) and maybe a few crows feet from all those working days out in the sunshine squinting at cricket balls.
The very helpful lady/girl (might have been 21 at the most) enquired as to whether I would like a ‘senior’s discount’. When I picked myself up off the marble floor I told her my age and enquired of the age barrier for such a discount. She issued me with a smile and a half-price ticket, the change from which I later spent on facial moisturiser of the ‘age regenerative’ genre.
A Sense of Community
The respect for age is something that, although sadly declining in western society, still holds importance in the east. Like Malaysia, Afghanistan does not have a reputation for playing the centuries old English game, yet within 17 years of the foundation of the first organised cricket in the country that borders Pakistan to the east and Iran to the west, they have some serious talent emerging and a national competition involving several hundred thousand players.
Cricket in India followed the British Raj and has almost 200 years of history there. Pakistan of course was a part of India but it was not until the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that it saw genesis in Afghanistan. The refugees that fled the Kalashnikov persuaders arrived in a cricket-mad Pakistan and natural athletic aptitude for competition and a team sport with individual emphasis took instant hold. In 2012, three new grounds with turf wickets have been opened with government and NGO support (there are already many grounds/areas with cement pitches just like the ones I learned the game on in rural New South Wales).
The message is that sport, and in this particular instance, cricket can be a community and indeed national unifier. When the National team, which has qualified for the second time for the 20/20 World Cup, played the Under 19 team to signal the opening of one of the new grounds the match sold out to 14,000 fans. It was televised and drew a multi-national sponsor. All this would be normal in the modern cricket playing nations but in a country that gets more bad press than Pakistan (can you believe it?) it seems almost incomprehensible. I found it difficult to grasp the extent and effect of the game. There is competition in 34 of the 36 provinces with Kandahar the current national champion (commence a series of gags about the pitches being minefields and the opening attack carrying AK47s etc.).
While I had flown in to KL from Sydney for the Asia Cup tournament, my Afghanistan team had flown from Kabul via Dubai. They had been in a training camp in the eastern city of Jalalabad in a new stadium. Many of the coaches and fathers began playing in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar or Quetta but now the children have all they want on home soil. All of the players are home grown, as is their senior team. Naturally I asked them about the dangers of living in Afghanistan and they laughed it off as a very safe place unless you want to go to the mountains around Tora Bora, which is too cold anyway.
I was assured by one of the senior coaches that Osama Bin Laden was not killed in the US attack at Abbottabad as he died of a kidney infection in Karachi five years ago and the Americans just wanted a method for closure on Bin Laden… who am I to argue!!
Yes, they have guns in their houses and in their cars but no one had used them yet, not in anger anyhow. These kids of 18 and 19, with their roots firmly in their families’ Pashtun ancestry, wear modern fashions and want modern toys. They were delightful company, stood up to give me a seat and were always attentive as they didn’t have iPods stuck in their ears all day. Seniors discounts, respect from teenagers, and cricket – a game of unity in a war torn country – it can’t be all bad!
