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Australia has called off its tour of Zimbabwe because of "security concerns" for its players. Pardon me if I don't buy that. The Australian prime minister was in the forefront of moves to have sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and have it turfed out of the Commonwealth.

The cancellation of the cricket tour is a continuation of pressure to make Robert Mugabe a "pariah". There can be no more blatant example of using sports to advance a sinister political agenda. Then the question arises: why was the Australian tour not taken to a neutral venue? The ICC itself set a precedent by shifting West Indies tour of Pakistan to Sharjah South Africa could have hosted the tour or Kenya could have. But that would have defeated the purpose which was to impose a kind of sanction on Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Shame on the Australians, shame on the ICC who acquiesced in this game of political upmanship.

I was immensely saddened to learn of the death of Ben Hollioake in a car accident in Perth. He was only 24-year-old, the early morning sun had not attained its noon. It was touching to see that both the England and New Zealand players wearing black arm-bands and their flags had half-mast at the cricket ground. Proof that cricket is one large family.

I am at a total loss to understand why the Pakistan team management did not allow the players to represent their department teams in a prestigious one-day domestic tournament. The argument that they were required for the training camp would come in the category of what the Irish would call blarney.

The hardest hit was PIA and since I had a lot to do with PIA cricket, I felt more incensed. One of the banes of Pakistan cricket is that no one appears to take domestic tournaments seriously. Imran Khan has cried himself hoarse asking for a rational domestic cricket format. But when we get a tournament that seems to be going well, we devalue it by pulling out the top players for a training camp.

I don't know what is so special about the training camp, are the players going through a strenuous drill, being kept busy through lectures and watching videos critically? Even if they are, none of this is a substitute for competitive cricket.

The departments and commercial organizations who employ cricketers do so because they expect them to play in the domestic tournaments. If they can't do that, what is the point of employing them? Already these departments are under pressure of downsizing and economy drives. The axe would fall on sportsmen employed by them. However, this 'error' was soon rectified and the players have been released.

I heard another version which is that these players themselves were not too keen to play. The departments concerned should investigate this and take whatever action they deem fit. Test cricketers make a lot of money these days and probably consider the salaries they get from their departments as peanuts. But there are other players who need the jobs and these Test cricketers are putting these jobs in jeopardy. Let me leave it at that and move on to more pleasant things.

The PCB honoured the members of the Pakistan 1992 World Cup winning team at a glittering function at Lahore. It was a wonderful gesture though a little over-ambitious for several other awards were given for performances in one day Internationals which, I felt, took some focus away from the main event. Still, there was a great collection of past and present Test cricketers as well as former heads of the cricket board and many others who have been part and parcel of the cricket scene.

This is the golden jubilee year of Pakistan cricket and this function was the first of others planned. It was a good occasion for me to touch base with many players and administrators among them Lt.-General K. M. Azhar, Justice Nasim Hasan Shah, Khalid Mahmood and Shahid Rafi.

I sat next to Imran Khan and we remembered the 1992 World Cup for we had spent many a splendid evening together in Australia and New Zealand and even when the team seemed down and out, Imran remained supremely confident that Pakistan would win the World Cup. This was self-belief taken to the heights of an article of faith.

The Chairman of the PCB Lt. General Tauqir Zia, always an impeccable host had chosen the 1992 World Cup because, as he told me, there was a dual purpose. Not only to remember the occasion but to motivate the present team, a reminder that cricket is about self-belief and about leadership and about the prayers of an entire nation.

For Imran winning the World Cup made it just that much easier to build the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital dedicated to the memory of his mother. Imran's Cancer Hospital is probably the best of its kind in a Third World country but more than that no other sportsman in the world has translated his celebrity into a cause as noble as this.

Fifty years of Pakistan cricket and I have been associated with it for almost all of these years and it has been a rewarding association. "Doesn't it make you feel old?" Someone asked me. "On the other hand, it's cricket that keeps me going," I told him.

I hope that the PCB will reserve a special function to honour Abdul Hafeez Kardar who had with his happy band of cricketers nurtured an acorn until it became a sturdy oak. He had the distinction too of winning a Test match against every country that he played against, India, England, New Zealand, Australia and the West Indies.

© Dawn