Keep it private

Kamran Abbasi will soon be offering his apologia for the ever-growing role that religion is playing in the Pakistani dressing room. Or so we are promised according to the advance publicity material for Cricinfo's monthly magazine. You heard it here first. (Osman Samiuddin has already pointed out how well "adherence to an Islamic code" is working for the Pakistani team).

I didn't like Hansie Cronje and his band of born-again Christians, with their covenants and their prayers (and presumably, crusades against the heathen world out there). And tell you what, I don't like Saeed Anwar's band of proselytizing cricketers. Youhana was the first to go; and as I've predicted below, I expect Kaneria to convert sometime soon.

Just keep the religion private, folks. Spare me the public prayers, the pieties, the invocations of the Almighty, the talk of "it" bringing the team together. And spare me the bloody conversions. That is so 1100 AD.