Striking the only sour note at the end of a great Twenty20 World Cup final last night, Malik said, "I want to thank everyone back home in Pakistan and Muslims all over the world. Thank you very much and I'm sorry that we didn’t win, but we did give our 100 per cent."
He had virtually staked claim for his country the sole ownership to the hopes and aspirations of millions of Muslim fans across the cricket world.
Shamim said, "Shoaib must have said that for his own countrymen, how can he speak for all the Muslims of the world? The way Irfan and Yusuf played for India, that’s all that matters to us. They have made us proud of the way India won the Cup."
A mother is more forgiving than others but the spirit behind her words found an echo across the blogosphere right after the post-match press conference. Criticism of Malik — who is married to Ayesha Siddiqui, from Hyderabad, India — combined expressions of outrage and anger to comments on Islam and Pakistan society.
Few expressed it more articulately than author Mukul Kesavan on his popular cricinfo.com blog Men in White, "It is a world where Muslims, Hindus and a Sikh currently play for England, where Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and a Hindu play for Sri Lanka, where Hashim Amla turns out for South Africa, where a Patel plays for New Zealand, where Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Hindus play (and have always played) for India. Why would Shoaib think, then, that the Muslims of the world were collectively rooting for the Pakistan team or that they felt let down by its defeat?
"Did he stop to think of how Danish Kaneria, his Hindu team-mate, might feel hearing his Test skipper all but declare that the Pakistan team is a Muslim team that plays for the Muslims of the world? It is one thing to be publicly religious — Shahid Afridi thanked Allah and Matt Hayden and Shaun Pollock are proud, believing Christians — quite another to declare that your country’s cricket eleven bats for international Islam," wrote Kesavan.
"I really don’t know what Malik meant by that," wondered Kapil Dev, in Ahmedabad, for a promotional event.
Anyway, Malik’s remark couldn’t have struck a more off-key note. For one, this India-Pakistan match was not at all about the usual eyeballing, sly sledges, or fans from both countries being segregated in two corners as it once used to happen in Sharjah. Here, hundreds of fans from both countries were sitting right next to each other, exchanging snack boxes, cheering for each other’s teams. Flags of both countries fluttered next to each other.
Why, just minutes after Malik’s stinker, there was the bouncy Shahid Afridi, veteran of many heated India-Pak contests, grinning into the microphone in Johannesburg, "I congratulate all the Indian nations." The syntax may have been wrong but the sentiment was just right — unlike Malik’s.