Sania-Shoaib On Overdrive

On April 5, when Pakistan's Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa province was rocked by five bomb blasts (allegedly detonated by the Taliban's now ubiquitous suicide bombers), a majority of Pakistan's impulsive TV news channels were telecasting the latest news coming in about the recent Sania-Shoaib saga.

This was perhaps for the first time in the last five years or so that a Taliban/al-Qaeda terrorist attack on Pakistani soil failed to make the headlines on local TV channels, in spite of the fact that the extremists' latest attack had killed over fifty people thus far.

What's more was that the news of President Asif Ali Zardari's speech to a joint session of the Pakistani parliament in which he celebrated the consensus reached between the parties of the PPP-led coalition government and the opposition on certain unprecedented amendments to the constitution, was relegated to secondary news.

It seemed nothing and no one was able to distract the local (electronic) news media from its screen-to-screen coverage of the controversy that had erupted at the wake of marriage plans between famous Pakistani cricket all-rounder, Shoaib Malik and popular Indian tennis star, Sania Mirza.

Pakistani TV channels have kept the viewers entertained (at the expense of Shoaib's nervous and besieged family that resides in the Pakistani city of Sialkot); this media commotion not only includes latest news on the event, but the coverage is also dotted with specially mixed tunes set to random footage of Shoaib and Sania, and cartoons explaining the whole thing as a 'love triangle.'

But whereas the Pakistani media is pretending to give vent to both sides of the story (Shoaib's views and those of the heartbroken Ayesha Siddiqui's), the Pakistani public at large seems to be supporting Shoaib's position --especially due the prevailing perception among Pakistanis who believe that most Indians are against the Shoaib-Sania union.

Websites, Facebook groups and blogs have cropped up almost overnight welcoming Sania as 'Pakistan's bhabee (sister-in-law),' and a majority of Pakistanis are starting to see Ayesha Siddiqui's side of the story as a cynically spun tale of betrayal that is studded with half-truths.

The government of Pakistan too has jumped into the fray, with the country's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, telling newsmen last Monday that the government was with Shoaib.

Surprisingly Pakistan's right-wing/religious parties like the Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and others, which usually get attention more through their hyperbolic sound bytes against India, and 'obscenity' than they do through votes (which continue to elude them), have remained somewhat quiet on the issue.

This is somewhat strange because these parties in the past have been the most vocal against what they saw and described as 'unIslamic behaviour' of Pakistani cricketers.

It is amazing how the scandalous exploits of Pakistani cricket's official 'bad boy,' the mercurial fast bowler, Shoaib Akhtar, failed to throw up the kind of hype the Shoaib-Sania affair has generated.

In fact, the last time a Pakistani cricketer generated so much interest in the country's media regarding his supposed romantic escapades was way back in 1979 when the Pakistan cricket team toured India for a lengthy six test series. That cricketer was Imran Khan, then a dashing 27-year-old all-rounder. Imran was given a torrid time by the local press for having an affair with former sex symbol and actress, Zeenat Aman.

But then, Shoaib hasn't been performing so well on the field lately. What's more, the Pakistan Cricket Board recently banned him for a year for showing constant dissent against the captain during Pakistan's tour of Australia last January.

So how come he is finding the kind of support from the media and the people of Pakistan that eluded poor Imran?

Perhaps the Pakistani public has forgiven him for this, believing that with the prospect of actually marrying an Indian tennis star in this day and age whirling in his mind, the poor chap was bound to feel cranky. His captain should have been more considerate. But certainly not as 'considerate' as the media on both sides of the border have been.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0