No more quick fixes

To mourn a career now in a shambles, after repeated confirmations of steroid use this week, take a look at the contradictions Shoaib Akhtar8217;s left his fans with

All of us who have wondered at the contradictions in Shoaib Akhtar8217;s career know this much. As he prepares for a possible ban for steroid use, this is the allegation that he will find the most embarrassing. That he could have consumed medication to enhance performance. Amidst the humiliation of being ordered home when the world8217;s best are assembled for the ICC Champions Trophy, an ego has been severely bruised.

Akhtar, ever since he burst into international cricket in the winter of 1997 8212; tellingly, having been dropped from a possible debut a year earlier on account of indiscipline 8212; has approached every next moment as an existential test. It8217;s been entertaining to watch. And also bewilderingly sad. There has never been anything in his run-up to convey that a playing career is in evolution. Nothing to suggest that the present is anything but the sole reality.

Watching him bowl this past decade 8211; when he8217;s not out of the game for injury or brief bans for chucking or, even, ball tampering 8212; has been a celebration of excess. Hair flapping in a wind generated even on a still day by the sheer ferocity of his run-up, knees folding and heels kicking into his back after every impact with the ground, determined to crack the 100 mph barrier each time. Each and every time.

To understand Akhtar, know that his career has been lived in the present moment, without a long eye on history or a reflective glance back. To mourn a career now in a shambles 8212; after repeated confirmations of anabolic steroid use this week 8212; take a look at the contradictions he8217;s left his fans with.

An example. March 16, 2004. Pakistan have just leveled the 8220;friendship series8221; 1-1. In the dimming floodlights in an emptying Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium he is bowling to a single stump. His team may have won this match, with three more to go, but he8217;s personally had a bad day. Tailenders Powar and Balaji took 16 off a single over. Captain Inazmam-ul Haq lumbers back to the middle, and consoles his bowler away from wasting his energy.

What was this enormous concentration on a lone stump meant to signal? The venom in his bowling for days and fixtures to come? Or an attempt to bring back the focus to his self? Was this late-night session born of regret or defiance? Like with all else in Shoaib8217;s career, no one will ever know. That moment, caught off-camera by this newspaper that night, remains emblematic as a clue to his mind.

Throughout this has been the way with Akhtar, an unstable equilibrium between phenomenal effort and wasteful self-indulgence. Through the fastest delivery of all time, those amazing two deliveries to Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar at Eden Gardens in 1999 that took the fight out of India, his tantrums on field and indiscipline off it. And through the slew of injuries that in the main made him miss half the Test Pakistan played since his debut.

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It drew the spectator8217;s interest each time, and locked them in an engagement separate from the drift of play. Each effort, even the most inconsequential, was an opportunity for drama. Just like the man, the questions asked of him have always carried contradiction. Was he concealing injury, or faking it? Was he giving just too much to every bowling spell, or was he too distracted by his own boasts about Bollywood offers to calibrate his game.

And now: Was he driven to steroidal assistance in order to perform to his own hyper-energetic standards, or in order to recover from injury speedily? Sadly, this time no one may care to appreciate the difference.