woohoo!!
my first post in the khail section..
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here’s a funny article…
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**Wanted: a simple girl for cricketing playboy Shoaib Akhtar **
KARACHI: Hameeda Akhtar of Rawalpindi is looking for a girl for her 25-year-old son. Nothing new in that except that this bit of news is bound to arouse the interest of several hopeful young women, especially when the man in question is no other than Pakistan’s cricketing icon Shoaib Akhtar.
Mrs. Akhtar has her own reasons to find a suitable mate for her progeny. She strongly feels that her “playboy” son would mature rapidly once he ties the knot with some sensible young woman.
Akhtar is not averse to the idea. “My mother has the sole right to select a girl for me, a simple girl who can take care of my needs. All the girls with me right now are there because I am famous,” says Akhtar. However, he hastily qualifies his statement, “But if I fall in love then I will marry that girl.”
Shoaib Akhtar’s meteoric rise to fame is the story of the metamorphosis of a bratty, girl-crazy adolescent into the world’s most talked about bowler. In fact, for all his cricketing prowess today, he hated the game previously. “Why would I stand in the sun all day when I could be chatting up girls in the comfort of my house?” he had confided in a friend.
Aggression is an essential part of his nature, and this frequently shows up in his actions on-field. In fact, until quite recently, Akhtar’s daily ritual included street fights, as the big knife scar hidden beneath his shirt indicates. Dubbed “Rawalpindi Express” for his whizzing deliveries today, Akhtar previously rode his Kawasaki 750 around town. His destinations included colleges for women. His fights, too, were invariably over girls. Fond of adventure, he would carry a gun with him and would fire aerial shots just for the thrill of it.
“I would come back late at night and my mother would always pray for me. She would say ‘Please be a good boy, Shoaib’,” he reminisces. “I owe her a lot and since she still prays for me I know I can never fail on cricket fields and have overcome injury nightmares.” Nevertheless, his mother was against his playing cricket. But, when Akhtar appeared determined to achieve something in the game, she relented.
Akhtar’s father worked for the government as a crude oil plant supervisor, and all together, with Akhtar’s siblings Shahid, 32, Zahid, 29, Obaid, 27, and 13-year-old Shumaila, they make up one big happy family.
“I was a bit pampered as my older brothers and parents showered love on me. It was a carefree life. I still miss my past; I can give this up in a minute because the pressures and demands of the cricket field are sometimes too much,” he sighs.
A pair of silken knickers, T-shirts, sunglasses, Spice Girls CDs, videos of thrillers and cricket matches, cricket magazines and a cigarette lighter strewn about his room sum up his personality. “Boss, I am like this, carefree and wanting to enjoy life. This is my age to do a bit of hulla gulla (fun and frolic) and I don’t like restrictions,” says Akhtar, who was suspended for one match for arriving late night in Australia in 1999.
As a player, Akhtar’s erratic ways earned him a bad report on Pakistan’s ‘A’ team tour to England in 1996 and his entry into Pakistan cricket was delayed by a year. Somehow, after noticeable performances in first class cricket he broke into the international cricket scene in 1997. During the 1999 World Cup media hype in Britain that he would become the first man to bowl at 100 miles per hour made him a star overnight.
Akhtar wants to be another Imran Khan - Pakistan’s most famous cricketer who led the team to a World Cup victory in 1992. “I love to be compared to Imran. He was my idol. He is still my idol. He tries to teach me everything about life - both off- and on-field. He was a real playboy and I had always wanted to be as popular as Imran,” he says, exhibiting a childlike exuberance. So has he filled Imran’s shoes?
“Kithay jee (not at all),” he says, adding, “ I am in search of that Imran Khan grace but the number of girls around does not allow me to come close to that. “I have changed my telephone number so many times because my mother gets plagued by all this. They say stupid things like they want to go out with me, and tell my mother that they want to marry me. I try to maintain my composure but for how long?” he questions.
Akhtar gets mail from all over the world and has a number of ‘girlfriends’, including one who came over from Australia this year. “She is a fan and we met in Brisbane in 1999 and ever since she has been calling me,” he says, refusing to give her name. “I got nearly 2,000 cards on my birthday, half of them from India,” he discloses.
Kids, like girls, attract Akhtar no end. Two years ago, he risked his life to save a child from a speeding vehicle in Australia. “The kid was so beautiful and after taking my autograph was crossing the road. He did not see the speeding car. I pulled him back otherwise he could have been killed.” Akhtar’s brave act made headlines in Australia.
The glamour and monetary rewards that go with cricket are not lost on Akhtar. Cricket, he says, has given him everything that he could wish for. “When I was a bad boy roaming the streets, I once thought of going to London. Because of cricket I have now visited London a hundred times. I have also been to Paris, the city of romance, all because of cricket,” he says.
His goal is to be remembered as the fastest bowler on earth. “Once I achieve this dream, I’d have achieved everything,” he says. After retirement, he wants to settle down and revert to a carefree life, but, uncharacteristically this time, without guns or girls.
Sure.Fine.Whatever.