In a latest TV interview, Mohammad Amir said following regarding the spirit of friendship on the field:
"There are no friendships on the field. Disturbing someone during a match does not mean you are disrespecting them. Off the field, we are all sitting around chatting and joking like friends. But on the field, it is about competition. You do whatever you can to break the opponent’s focus within the spirit of the game,"
He also discussed the fierce nature of cricket in past.
"Cricket was much fiercer in the past. Sir Vivian Richards is with us, you can ask him about it. Back then, it felt like someone might actually hit you with the bat on the field. That kind of aggression was part of the beauty of the game. You had to mentally unsettle the batter to break their concentration. If someone hits a shot off my first ball, I am not going to hug him. I will obviously say something to try and throw him off focus."
We were young and didn't know about the world & so in our naivete wanted to meet the cricket stars of the time. As luck may have it my then best friend and a class fellow whose uncle happened to be the team physio/doctor of Pakistan introduced us to many of our stars & emerging players & one of them was Amir. He was a frail looking uncomfortably talking boy & despite uncle saying that he's 17, he looked even younger than that. It was even harder to believe it when he said "one day he will be the greatest bowler to have ever played for Pakistan". We looked at uncles face, & then Amir's and it was just kind of impossible to believe the authenticity of the statement. Truth be told, Amir barely looked like a cricketer, let alone a fast bowler as his wrists were thinner than all of us, he walked a little hunched & was thin as a wafer in such a blatant manner that all of us looked healthier & more fit than him & most of us weren't even his age.
Cue the passing of time & a few years later when we have all moved on in life & doing other things, one day I find myself sitting in front of the television & Amir is bowling a once in a lifetime kind of over to Dilshan and on the back of his spell we end up winning an ICC trophy. His success felt so personal as we had seen him go from the shy weakling to a confident long haired fashionable bloke who was ready to take on the world (middle comb parted hairstyle that was inspired by Afridi & possibly Salman Khan as well from Tere Naam & was considered super fashionable those days, don't judge me, it was what it was).
All of us old friends managed to ring each other and talked about him & his success & how despite looking impossible a few years ago, he had done it. I'm sure my friend even got a call from his uncle which basically was a smirky "I told you so".
Then came that ill-fated tour that in many ways made me a realist about both life & cricket. Our players just didn't get caught, they were almost shameless about it in a manner which was just incredulous. It was good on Amir that at least he grew a minor backbone for whatever reason and apologized to the nation but between all of this, my perspective about him & the sport had changed. For a very long time I hoped for him to make a comeback though, who doesn't like a great redemption story, & I even stayed up to watch his comeback match against the Kiwis. Cricket rarely made me feel anything this passionately at this point in life but his return did manage to make me take notice. A few days later, however, it had dawned on me as it continued to become blatantly obvious that he's not the same person that we had known once.
This Amir was more focused on himself, which I cannot say is a bad thing, but the selfishness reached a level that it was just about the bottom line in the bank statement. His first excuse that I was out of the game for 5 years hence I don't have the fitness made zero sense to me for if he wanted to do so, it wasn't hard at all. Every time he came on to the field it was crystal clear that he didn't want to do the hard yards anymore. His ambition was simple, wear colored clothing, play a meaningless match, collect a check, hope for British passport, & then play a couple of seasons in IPL to retire & live a life of comfort. It wasn't just us whose dream had died, it was also Amir who just didn't care about the bigger picture anymore.
This boy had the world at his feet at one point. Raw skill, truckloads of charisma, a sharp cricketing mind, & a perfect mix of arrogance & confidence. At the end of the day, there's nothing to write on the epitaph of his cricketing career, a spell of six overs here, a spell of two overs there, but the irony is that despite being such a little part in our cricketing history, man owns 2/3rd of the white ball trophies that we have collected in our entire 75+ years of playing this great sport.
I wish I could go back to the summery days of 05' & 06' & somehow tell him to not get into bad company. Tell him that the gold chains & fancy clothes are not the be all end all of life. Tell him that glory doesn't pay the bills directly but it pays so much more if one is dedicated & committed to success the right way. So much sadness when I think about it at times, at the end of the day I just want to shout this at the top of my lungs & get over & done with ala Fazeer, "Why did you do that ........ unbelievable........ why?".
