There’s not much you can say that’s suitable for public airing when your employers announce to the world that you’ve got the clap*
Which is basically what the beleagured Pakistan Cricket Board did to Shoaib Akhtar when they announced his removal from the Pakistan squad for the upcoming World Twenty20.
Now once the schoolboy joking and giggling is out of the way, this is another example of being unfit for purpose. And I’m not talking about Shoaib. There are any number of polite euphemisims that could and should have been used which do not say “He’s got the clap!”. It isn’t difficult. It isn’t rocket science.
Shoaib may not have too long left in his cricket career. Whatever his previous misdemeanours, an announcement such as this one from the PCB is unwarranted and undeserved. There is supposed to be a bond of trust between employer and employee. The employer is the one who’s driven a coach and horses through that bond on this occasion.
Kamran Abbasi knows a thing or two about medical disclosures. His day job is as editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and chief executive and editor-in-chief of OnMedica.com. He is also the author of the excellent Pak Spin blog which seeks to demystify the sometimes bizarre workings of Pakistan cricket. Naturally Kamran has a few thoughts of his own on this issue. As ever, they’re well worth reading.
* “clap” is colloquial slang for sexually transmitted infection