LAHORE – Confused smiles. Embarrassing gestures! The confusion was evident on the faces of the stars of Pakistan cricket when they were chosen as the face of Pakistan cricket to unveil the jersey that they will wear during the upcoming India series.
Honoured are disgusted or mere victim of stupidity and ignorance of the event’s organisers, Umar Gul and Kamran Akmal unveiled the uniform in a bizarre fashion by putting a hand on the jersey while the maker, may be more interested in unveiling himself than jersey on this advertising opportunity, was waving it.
It was quite a laughable situation and more lamentable. The high-ups of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) always stress the need for educating the players to make them more presentable and aware on the world sports arena and even never hesitate to hire a shrink to off and on to make them psychologically sound, but it seems the board officials themselves are in a dire need of learning some manners.
Throughout the world, whenever such a prestigious moment comes when a team unveils its uniform, it presents its star players wearing it rather than waving. The teams present their stars like a model rather than a vendor. And PCB’s adopted policy to unveil the uniforms resembles to that practice of displaying dowry on the eve of marriages. The only exception is for coaches or retired players who represent the honorary jerseys while not wearing them.
The real problem with the PCB is that it only copycats the practices around the globe without learning the spirit of that practice. From hiring the coaches to introducing the technology, all the efforts usually collapse because the real spirit of that particular practice never sinks in with the PCB officials and it ends up in a disaster rather than boring fruit. So it’s high time for the PCB to atleast arrange some educational activities for the officials who arrange activities for the representation of the board in the media representation to learn some proper etiquettes to host such events. And it can be hoped that despite not unveiling, the players of the team will get matching trousers too. Otherwise you can expect anything from the board. Fingers crossed till the match day!