PAKISTAN - A DEN OF OSTRICHES AND CONSPIRACY THEORISTS AND SOME HORRIBLY MISPLACED PATRIOTISM!

Just about sick to the stomach of all these letters and reports pouring in from Pakistani's all over the globe about the current Pakistan - India cricket series being rigged. If ever more evidence was needed that we are indeed a nation of the worlds sorest losers....well, look no further.

Before the series started and having analysed India's magnificent performance on their tour of Australia most armchair pundits believed that our neighbours would start off as hot favourites for the One Day series while the home side with their brilliant if utterly temperamental fast bowlers might have the edge in the Test series. We also seemed to have forgotten India's superb showing in last years World Cup where they were irresistable until the very final hurdle. So why wasn't their a chorus of disapproval and howls of "fixing" when the improbable happened and Pakistan managed to win the second and third matches of the series?

It seems that for Pakistani's all matches that they win are not fixed but all matches that they lose are bound to be fixed because after all we being Pakistani's can only walk on water and the only way that anyone can perhaps perform any task or deed better than us is when there has been a conspiracy or a plot to foil us.

The more perfect we delude ourselves into believing we are - the weaker we will remain, not only as a cricket team but as a nation. By refusing to acknowledge that we have any failings we merely regress further into a delusional world in which we see ourselves as more holy, more pious, more righteous and more important than any other nation or people on earth.

One of the most excruciating aspects of watching the One Day internationals at the stadiums was the ghastly diet of embarassing fascist themed songs that blared out from the speakers sytems during the intervals. There is far more to "I Love You Pakistan" then pretending that we have no weaknesses and no problems of our own and that every thing that goes wrong in this land is the work of the Americans, Israel and the Zionist lobby and that much dreaded "Third Hand" that keeps meddling in our affairs and causing all sorts of mayhem.

Patriotism is so horribly misplaced when all you can do is wave flags and brandish huge ugly stickers on your cars claiming superiority over the rest of the world. Wouldn't it be more patriotic to acknowledge one's follies and weaknesses and to sincerely go about eliminating them rather than continuously crying "conspiracy theory". But then laying blame for one's own weaknesses is far easier than actually lifting a figer to do anything about them. Sadly, in a nuthsell, the latter applies to the Pakistani psyche to a T and this goes for cricket or any other aspect of life.

To love one's country surely does not mean that you refuse to recognize its failings and weaknesses? Sadly we choose to live like ostriches with our heads buried deep in the sand and our pride and vested interests refusing to allow us to evolve naturally with the passage of time.