Fallen Angels And Prodigal Sons
Mohammad Amir, LeBron James, and Lance Armstrong can’t be compared, but each presents compelling case studies in selfishness, ambition, and the limits of redemption.
Imagine you are 18 years old.
Imagine you are 18 years old and people all over the world already know your name. You’ve come from humble beginnings and now you’re famous. Famous because you’re an athletic prodigy — already one of the best fast-bowlers in world cricket. Famous because you were a key component of your country’s World Cup victory. Famous because of the bright future laid out in glory and gold before you. A future that experts and former players alike are already predicting will be history-making.
Only, now, you’re famous for throwing that talent and promise away.
This is how it felt to be Pakistani fast-bowler Mohammad Amir on August 28th, 2010. That was the day Amir — along with bowling partner Mohammad Asif and the captain that coerced them, Salman Butt — was exposed as a fixer. No sooner had England wrapped up an utterly destructive win over Pakistan than news broke of a bookie named Majeed, and the plan he’d hatched together with a trio of circket stars. The press and authorities converged on Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, the sacred home of the sport. There was, perhaps, no more tragic a place to tarnish the good name of this, a gentleman’s game.
Amir pled guilty to spot-fixing, a more insidious, and more undetectable, form of sabotage profiteering. For a decade prior, cricket’s biggest scandal was widely considered to be the discovery that Hansie Cronje, captain for South Africa, had conspired to throw matches in his country’s tour of India in 2000. In the wake of the Cronje Affair, bookies, gamblers, and gangsters alike swiftly adapted to a new form of cricket betting — spot fixing — that boasted hundreds more chances to cheat, and win.
Simply put, the scheme involves the fixing of minute aspects of a game ostensibly unrelated to the final result. Typically, these take the form of small penalties, such as a fault in tennis, or clocking the first throw-in or corner in association football. Bets are placed on the timing and frequency of these peripheral events — wagers that corrupt bookies will coerce bettors to stake against. In spot-fixing, the bookie always wins against the odds because the bookie makes the odds, aided all the while by hired hands who’ve prearranged everything from the inside.
In that infamous match at Lord’s in 2010, the young Amir, who had displayed his trademark ferocity and skill throughout the five match series, bowled so astonishingly well (he took 6/84, with England at 102/7 at one point) that not only was no mind paid to his deliberate no-balls (the cricket equivalent of foot-faults); everyone at the stadium likely believed he was steering his side to a record-breaking victory. Sadly, a different, more sordid history was made instead.
Despite sympathies regarding his age, and the clear naïveté that led to his compliance, Mohammad Amir was sentenced to six months in prison for his role in the spot-fixing scandal. Worse still, he was banned from all forms of cricket for five years. For cricket devotees the world over, and particularly for fans in Pakistan, the shame of watching a young hero’s fall from grace — into probable, inescapable oblivion — was matched only by the pain in wondering, perhaps forever, what might have been.
Earlier that summer, superstar forward LeBron James announced — to unrivaled fanfare, and in the most drawn-out, chest-thumping sports charade I’d seen since the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics — that he was leaving his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for the superior talent and sunnier climes of the Miami Heat. I’m not a basketball fan in the slightest, and yet I found myself sympathizing with the citizens of Cleveland (and all of Ohio, for that matter).
NBA players are free (and even encouraged) to roam from franchise to franchise, of course. But LeBron felt different. He was Ohio’s pride; Cleveland’s superman; the boy who’d been lauded for years as the region’s inevitable sports savior; the one prophesied to shatter Cleveland’s title-less curse and deliver the unthinkable: an NBA Championship. If my messiah had abandoned me to seek more wins in a foreign land of beaches, babes, and bigger paychecks, I’d have felt distraught and betrayed, too.
Now imagine if Ohio was a third-world country engulfed in constant political struggle, poverty, and violence. Imagine if the Cleveland Cavaliers were the only place Ohioans could find hope, with LeBron — only just beginning to cut into what seemed like a long and prosperous career — marshaling the quest for a bit of joy amidst the much.
That’s what it was like to be a Pakistani cricket fan, nay a Pakistani, in 2010.
Now take the anger and frustration Cleveland fans felt when LeBron braggadociously announced his intention to “take my talents to South Beach,” and intensify it a thousand fold. That, in a caustic kernel, is how Pakistan felt when Mohammad Amir was convicted — when he, in a manner at once more innocent and yet infinitely more nefarious, abandoned his country.
There is a mythic familiarity to the image of the disgraced sportsman, whereby the deserter’s drama feels more apt for an Athenian stage than repetitious clips on SportsCenter. Athletes rarely become heroes by accident; their basic, physical prowess and uncanny, individual excellence are the truest forms of validation in an age of digital enhancement and publicity circuses. They are, without a hair of hyperbole, our modern day Olympians. As such, when they slip to become mere mortals again, proven susceptible to the same weaknesses as their devotees, the crash to earth only loudens.
And yet, it’s worth wondering whether such violent oscillations — in perception; in expectations; in perspective — are justified. Why, in the end, does disgrace wash away for some, but for others remain permanent?
Just as LeBron was preparing to leave Northeast Ohio, right around the time Mohammad Amir was agreeing to what would be a career-ending mistake, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency began its formal investigation of American cyclist Lance Armstrong. The resulting inquiry uncovered Armstrong’s consistent use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), resulting in his being stripped of seven Tour de France titles and, more fundamentally, a permanently tarnished reputation. The man once considered the ultimate “comeback kid” — the humanitarian superhuman who beat all the odds, from cancer to countless gunning foes — had, it seemed, sold his soul to something far, far darker.
Two years after the conclusion of Armstrong’s 2012 indictment, through a less garish, intimate essay published in Sports Illustrated, James announced he would be returning home to the team that set him on his hero’s journey. After an illustrious career with the Miami Heat, his words spoke volumes:
“Before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from Northeast Ohio. It’s where I walked. It’s where I ran. It’s where I cried. It’s where I bled. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up. I sometimes feel like I’m their son. Their passion can be overwhelming. But it drives me. I want to give them hope when I can. I want to inspire them when I can. My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn’t realize that four years ago. I do now.”
LeBron had grown in Miami. Wiser, more mature, more tactical, and still undoubtedly fantastic at basketball, LeBron james came back to do what he was destined to do, and Cleveland, though understandably guarded, welcomed him back. This past weekend, LeBron James — alongside a cast of teammates he himself helped construct — delivered the the Cavs their first-ever NBA championship, the city’s first professional title in 52 years. The King’s prodigal promise kept, fans the world over await the next LeBron James saga. Wherever the destination, the journey is sure to be as rife with drama, and imbued with the same love-hate fervor, as it’s always been.
Mohammad Amir, LeBron James, and Lance Armstrong can’t be compared — at least not without profound narrative flexibility. At a distance, though, the three present similarly compelling case studies in selfishness, ambition, and the limits of redemption.
For a teenager from Pakistan, where £1.00 is equal to Rs.140 (in 2010, now it’s almost Rs.160), where respecting elders is held aloft as social currency both on the cricket pitch and in the annals of a endemically corrupt political system, it’s near impossible to refuse a captain’s proposal. Mohammad Amir acted selfishly, but he did so out of fear. During his subsequent shunning, Amir discovered Iqbali self-determination, which emphasizes the Urdu concept of khudi, or courage. For Amir, that courage means admitting he was wrong and working, now and forever, towards improvement. For the nation of Pakistan, courage has meant forgiving Amir enough to grant him a second chance.
For a talented young man at the center of media frenzy, dreaming to realize his potential and grow as an athlete, it’s difficult to refuse a proposal from a team that’s been a home to legends. LeBron James was selfish for reasons of fortune and glory. In this writer’s opinion, such a shortcoming falls into the category of positive selfishness — the kind that pushes a person to be true best self. Having captured his long-desired glory and improved as both a player and a person, LeBron returned home ready to tackle his greatest challenge, while the city, long past the point of letting old slights get in the way of civic redemption, received the man it once believed abandoned them.
Lance Armstrong, for his part, epitomizes this phenomenon’s opposite. Unlike James, Armstrong saw what he wanted to become, but refused to accept his body simply wasn’t good enough. Unlike Amir, he remains, to this day, defiant and unaccepting of wrongdoing. He lied — to his peers; to the sport he claimed to love; to the people that believed in him; to himself. Despite their disappointing decisions, LeBron and Amir were always as talented as they claimed to be. Armstrong, on the other hand, was the false prophet. He lies still today, and so the world does not, and cannot, embrace him. For Lance Armstrong, selfishness is rooted in a place beyond sport: a pure, blindly-raging hunger for power.
Amir’s reintegration into international cricket officially began this past January, during a T20 International against New Zealand, just shy of four months after he was formally cleared to return. Whispers of his imminent ascendance have — in the days and weeks since, and with every wicket he takes — only grown louder. Fans remain cautiously optimistic, but cautious still, and not a little curious. Is he still the wunderkind we once adored? Can we ever truly trust him again? For a time, even some of Amir’s teammates considered refusing to play for Pakistan were he to be re-selected. Deep wounds seldom heal fast. And yet, the wickets kept tumbling, the respect for his undeniable talent growing, however, incrementally, with every batsmen dismissed.
On July 14, after seven months in green, Amir, the disgraced rising star, will don his white uniform and return to Test cricket, the game’s most prestigious level. It’s been six years since he stepped off the pitch at Lord’s, swelling with the guilt that would soon be exposed by the international media. Now he’s back to right his wrongs the best way he can— bowling fast.
The Amir we’ve seen of late; the Amir who will take the new ball at Lord’s: This is a new man, and one with much to prove, both in terms of skill and character. I, as do many, believe he’s got it in him. Like LeBron upon his prodigal return, Amir is truly wiser and more mature, his refined mindset perhaps his greatest on-field accomplishment. Despite the animosity surrounding his return, Amir recognizes his destiny — as a bowler of such profound talent — is now bigger than himself.
Life has humbled Amir, forcing him to reconcile himself with past demons, and the apologies still owed to sport and country both. “I never thought about my comeback and I feel terribly lucky to be back to play Test cricket again,” Amir told ESPNCricinfo, “…If anyone still hasn’t learned a lesson from [my case], then he will be the biggest fool…My only aim is to be the best bowler of the series, get Pakistan to win…and sign off with fresh memories.”
The Amir that hurls now still harbors the fire we once knew, albeit a bit more humbled and imbued with respect — for the game; for those that love it; for himself. Whether the world of cricket is ready for it or not, Mohammad Amir, the prodigal son of Pakistan, has returned to glory’s warpath.
