So, Fawad Ahmed Khan (to give him his full Pukthun name) has put himself out there again, this time flaunting his religion in what otherwise is supposed t be a secular country. God help Cricket Australia down the track when we have a raft of devout and disparate Christians and their diverse beliefs, as well as Bhuddists, Jews, Hindus, Zorastrians, bona fide Atheists and Calathumpians etc etc in the team all objecting to aspects of various sponsors. The whole sponsorship thing that pays their wages will break down. But that's another story for another day.

I have until now held back on the complete and utter charade under which a desperate Australia has cheapened itself to gain the services of at best an average first class cricketer from another country to bolster its threadbare ranks of spinners. The fact that CA was complicit -- indeed initiated and pushed the Immigration Minister to favourably review an earlier rejection by the normally lenient Refugee Review Tribunal (which says something in itself) of FAK's application for refugee status after initially coming here on a temporary visa to play club cricket -- shows the level of desperation that has made gullible Australia a laughing stock not only in the vast cricketing community in Pakistan but among the huge South Asian cricketing diaspora in Europe, North America and even Australia.

FAK's assertion that he was persecuted and threatened by "religious extremists" because of his "Western" leanings, including support for women's education, fell neatly into the West's perception (indeed reality) of what is happening in that troubled region. Except for one thing: There are tens of millions of other cricketers (including Afghans) playing cricket on maidans (open spaces) in cities, towns and villages across Pakistan. It seems oxymoronic that he is now using tenants of his religion to gain a special privilege. (By the way, did anyone hear anything similar from Usman Khawaja, the first Muslim to play for Aus?)

FAK made his first class debut in 2005 for Abbottabad, a hill station renowned for its many schools, colleges and academies (besides providing a bolthole for the late unlamented OBL). So was FAK the sole voice of reason among the millions playing the game in the region he comes from? If not, be ready to be deluged by a new wave of cricket refugees once Rudd/Abbott stop the boats!  

Old school Paki cricketers such as Javid Maindad will be laughing their heads off, knowing that after more than three decades they have seen the circus come a full circle: Once the favourite targets to be vilified by the Aus press, the Lucky Country now has to stoop to contrive to get help in the form of a Paki cricketer so far down the pecking order as to have Buckley's chance of being picked for the country of his birth, a la new chum Yarpie Imran Tahir. (Some reading this forum will be too young to remember Maindad, the guy vilified by the Aus press as an "annoying" SOB. His crime: Having the balls to be the first player from the sub-continent to take it up to the Aussie bully boy "sledging" tactics by cricketers such as the LMC trio. Yet he was cast as the villain, even after DKL disgracefully kicked him on the field and got away with less than a tap with a feather duster. The villain tag is perpetuated by the forever misleading photo of Maindad with bat raised above his head but never used -- as he should have -- in response to being kicked.

FAK, the webs we weave . . . and the one's spun around us.