THE xenophobes in Australia — and that’s a goodly proportion of the population — will find themselves in a difficult position if Fawad Ahmed is granted citizenship and selected to play for Australia in the Ashes cricket series against England later this year.<\/p>\n
You see, Ahmed is an asylum-seeker from Pakistan. Asylum-seekers are a class of human beings whom the average Australian, with his\/her devotion to a fair go, deems to be sub-human and only deserving of being sent back to their country of origin. Or drowned at sea.<\/p>\n
Ahmed applied for permanent residence last year and while he was awaiting a decision, it emerged that he was a more than capable leg-spinner. Australia was a few weeks from taking on South Africa in a Test series and so he was asked to go over and help the Australians in their net practice. South Africa has a spinner of Pakistani origin, Imran Tahir, in its ranks and the Australians needed to play a good spinner to prepare to face Tahir.
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\nAfter that the authorities intervened and got him his PR pretty fast. Ahmed did well in the nets, landed a contract with the Melbourne Renegades in the annual Twenty20 tournament, and did a pretty good job there too.<\/p>\n
Next, he was selected to play for Victoria against Queensland and promptly returned a match-bag of seven wickets. His captain, Cameron Smith, ranks Ahmed as the best spinner he has seen after Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill. That is high praise indeed.<\/p>\n
Smith’s observations come at a time when Australia has just been hammered by India in the first Test of a four-match series on a spinning track in Chennai. Australia’s lone spinner was taken for 215 runs in the first innings and ended with 4 wickets for 244 in the game.<\/p>\n
And so the talk has turned to how Australia will combat not only India in the remaining Tests, but England in June. This is an English team that defeated India 2-1 in a Test series in India very recently, with two spinners, Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar, proving to be the trump cards.<\/p>\n
Enter Ahmed. There is talk that the immigration minister Brendan O’Connor is now considering his application for citizenship. Australia is a sports-mad country and the Ashes are one of the most popular sporting contests. Australia never forgets that it was initially populated by convicts who were sent from Britain; paying back the mother country is something every Australian loves.<\/p>\n
If Ahmed makes it and proves to be some kind of equalising factor in the Ashes, it will be a classic good news story.<\/p>\n
But the xenophobes will choke on their cornflakes – after all, how can a brown-skin from a country like Pakistan, ever be considered a good enough person to play cricket for Australia?
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