It might be that Justice Quayyum will be able to do it as he is familiar with the subject. The Quayyum Report, it will be remembered, banned two players for life earlier this year and fingered half a dozen more of Pakistan's finest cricketers. The question now is when will the inquiry take place. Pakistan's finest are not very happy at this development, which they were told about at a meeting at the national stadium in Karachi 10 days ago with the PCB president, General Tauquir Zia. But they will be even less happy if the inquiry takes place with the speed some sources here suggest and is completed by the end of the Test series against England in mid-December.
Pakistan cricket is perennially rife with rumours.
If this one is right, certain senior Pakistani players are going to have serious distractions over the coming weeks and will not have their eyes solely on the ball. Supporters of this theory can point to the way Pakistan's heads went down in the Karachi one-day international with inordinate speed, even if dew was hampering their bowling plans. Pakistan's victory at Lahore was achieved mostly by their younger players, who have a moral earnestness which is appealing, not least to the military government which wants to clean up all of Pakistan's act. Pressure to conduct a World Cup inquiry is also thought to have come from the International Cricket Conference at their meeting in Nairobi earlier this month, which Saeed attended. This England party have a moral earnestness about them, too, not like some former teams who have looked down their noses and sniggered at bad English, bad toilet facilities or bad umpiring.