Guest Writer
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| By JK Randle |
FOR the avoidance of doubt and as a matter of record, the official address of Barack Obama the President of the United States of America (who happens to be black) is:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
United States of America
Wherever and whenever there is trouble anywhere in the world, he is the “Go to guy” – as the most powerful man in the world. There is no dispute about that. However, unknown to the rest of the world the White House habours probably the best sporting facilities and garden in any private/official residence in the world (only the Vatican is a close second and Buckingham Palace would at best be third). As for the First Lady, Michele she has become adept at avoiding the banana skins by dodging any direct participation in the political arena other than in a supportive role to her husband.
She has scrupulously steered well away from any controversies. Instead, she has concentrated on advertising a healthy life style for her family – plenty of exercise and no junk food. The President works out regularly and vigorously in the gym and the basketball court.
I am not entirely sure how the spirited discussion between Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon (Secretary-General of the United Nations); Dr Jim Yong Kim (President of the World Bank) and Mrs Christine Lagarde (Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund) drifted off course into sports but it may have had something to do with the declaration by the Republican Party that following the mid-term elections and the appalling performance of the Democratic Party (to which Obama belongs), Barack Obama had become a “lame duck” president. The Republicans would now have majority in the Senate (led by Senator George J Mitchell) and the House of Representatives (led by John Andrew Boehner).
The Senior Elder Citizens promptly volunteered the unsolicited information that “a duck” in cricket means “zero runs”. To be “out for a duck” means the batsman did not score even a single run!!
It was entirely lost on Barack, Ban Ki, Jim and Christine. It was to no avail that we carefully explained to them what cricket is all about and how the game is played. In India, Pakistan, Sri-Lanka, Australia and South Africa, cricket is a religion at par with American football (soccer) or baseball and the “beautiful game of football” in Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Britain, Germany, Spain etc.
By way of digression when Bill Shankly, the Manager of Liverpool Football Club was asked whether football was a matter of life and death, without batting an eye lid, his reply was:
“Much more than life and death”!!
Actually, there are two versions of Bill Shankly’s deposition on “Life, Death and Football”:
- “Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.”
- “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”
Anyway, there we were with four of the most cerebral and vastly intelligent human beings, yet they knew nothing about the famous names in cricket such as:
- Sachin Tendulkar
- Wasim Akram
- Shahid Afridi
- Shoaib Akhtar
- MS Dhoni
- Brian Lara
- Chris Gayle
- Sir Donald Bradman
- Garfield Sobers
- Dennis Compton
- Ricky Ponting
- Shaun Pollock
- Andrew Flintoff
- Lasith Malinga
- Muralidaran
- Brett Lee
- Imran Khan
- Kumar Sangakkara
- Muttiah Muralitharan
We drew a complete blank. Anyway, we decided to give it another try – starting with the cricket kit, the rules of the game followed by explanation of the role of the wicket-keeper as well as the two umpires. No progress whatever. In walked Bill Gates, the richest man in the world and unquestionably a super brain. He was very quietly spoken, very shy and humble. Ironically, he stammers and he once disclosed that he is dyslexic. Regardless of these handicaps he has become a combination of maestro and supremo.
We had to start all over again but all these “super brains” were entirely lost. They had no clue regarding what we were talking about!! They just could not figure it out. What kind of game drags on for five days and you end up with a draw?!!
It turned out that Christine Lagarde is not only a legal icon and financial expert, she also has outstanding sporting credentials. In her previous life, she was a member of the French synchronized swimming national team and even made it to the Olympics. I am not at liberty to disclose which of the men proceeded to blow a kiss at the blushing Christine!!
As for Jim Yong Kim, perhaps the reason he had so much difficulty in grasping the intricacies of cricket was on account of his being distracted or even unsettled by the following report in “BusinessDay” and “Financial Times” newspapers of Friday, 21 November, 2014.
Headline: “THE WORLD BANK RISKS SLIDING INTO IRRELEVANCE”
A few years ago, turmoil at the world’s main development bank would have generated headlines across the globe. Today, it barely causes a ripple. The World Bank is in the throes of an organizational restructuring unleased by Jim Yong Kim, its president. The end product remains as murky as ever.
As it copes with the fallout from the first employee “work stoppage” in its history – and the threat of more to come – the rest of the world is moving on. Both in terms of the cost of development loans and the conditions attached, the bank is increasingly undercut by others, most notably China. More than halfway through his term, Mr Kim has a narrowing window to articulate a vision for the bank that he leads. Failure to do so will only hasten its journey to the sidelines.
So far the signs are not good. Mr Kim’s plan is to move the bank away from its geographic focus with the creation of 14 global practices along sectorial lines, such as health and education. The idea is to make the bank’s still considerable technical expertise more efficiently available to its clients. The result so far is more centralization.
At the same time, Mr Kim is squeezing $400m from the bank’s operational budget, which is expected to include hundreds of job losses. The problem is that virtually no one including the bank’s normally quiescent staff appears to know where this will lead. To his credit, Mr Kim has tried to explain his plan to often hostile staff. Alas, his explanations have only sowed more confusion. It does not help that the bank is awash with the clashing advice of management consultancies. Nor is it fair for Mr Kim to imply that World Bank staff are a pampered elite resistant to change. In the past few years, the bank’s employees have lost many of their fabled benefits. Among the complaints Mr Kim has highlighted are loss of parking spaces and generous breakfast allowances.
Yet the feedback from a recent survey reveals a staff that is genuinely confused about the purpose of its mission. Among the hundreds of negative comments very few touched on loss of emoluments.
It may be right to cut pension benefits and slim down the payroll as Mr Kim is doing. But it is tone deaf to reward top managers with bonuses at the same time. After staff uproar, Bertrand Badre, the bank’s head of finance, recently returned a $94,000 “special skills premium” bonus. This was fitting. No one should be rewarded for results not yet achieved.
It is one thing to botch a restructuring, quite another to confuse its purpose. This newspaper had doubts about Mr Kim’s appointment in 2012 because he lacked the managerial experience to take on such a daunting task. At the same time, Barack Obama, US president, missed the chance to appoint someone from the developing world. That would have helped restore the bank’s legitimacy in Africa and elsewhere.”
Matters were deteriorating rapidly. Hence, the Senior Elder Citizens were compelled to give up proselytising about cricket in the hope of winning new converts — Barack, Jim, Ban Ki, Christine and Bill. Thankfully, Christine brought up the subject of the latest book she has read. She waxed lyrical about what she has learnt from China, largely on account of her reading “Les Trente Glorieuses Chinoises” by Caroline Puel a book which delves into the country’s transformation in the last thirty years.
Absolutely fascinating to observe at close range how discussions went back and forth between these super brains trying to dig into the entrails of China’s astonishing success in reversing poverty and creating vast wealth while holding on tenaciously to its communist/socialist principles and dogmatic adherence to strict central control of power. This prompted Jim Yong Kim to disclose that he was currently reading a hefty book about the “Beijing Consensus”. The Beijing Consensus is a term that refers to the political and especially economic policies of the People’s Republic of China that began after the death of Mao Zedong and the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping and are thought to have contributed to China’s eightfold growth in gross national product over two decades.
We were sufficiently intrigued to delve into Wikipedia to learn that the phrase “Beijing Consensus” was coined by Joshua Cooper Ramo to pose China’s economic development model as an alternative – especially for developing countries – to the Washington Consensus of market – friendly policies being promoted by the IMF; World Bank and the United States of America.
What followed thereafter is a little fuzzy, but I think it was Bill Gates who brought up the issue of “Chaos Theory”. He took the trouble to explain for the benefit of the Senior Elder Citizens that Chaos Theory studies the behaviour of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions — a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect.
Basically, while most traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena like gravity, electricity or chemical reactions, Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear dynamics whereby seemingly random events are actually predictable from simple deterministic equations.
Honestly, keeping up with these superhumans was no easy task. We could only marvel at the ease with which they switched from the propagation of a profound apotheosis to an even more complex issue. I believe it was Barack Obama who rattled us with his postulation on “Elite Capture” as the driving force behind his determination to protect his “legacy” – liberalization of healthcare (“Obamacare”). The President of the United States of America proceeded to explain that “Elite Capture” is best illustrated when and where resources transferred (and) designated for the benefit of the larger population are usurped (hi-jacked) by a few individuals of superior status – be it economic, political, educational, ethnic or otherwise.
The Seven Elder Citizens thoroughly enjoyed the flip-back, at the insistence of Bill Gates, to the term “Washington Consensus” which was coined in 1989 by English economist John Williamson. It refers to a set of ten relatively specific economic policy prescriptions which he considered constituted the “standard” reform package prescribed for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C. based institutions. It was essentially about opening up markets (free market) and cutting public spending.
It was left to Ban ki-moon to remind us that the counterpoise to the “Washington Consensus” is the “Chinese Consensus” which is anchored on the pragmatic use of innovation and experimentation in the service of “equitable, peaceful, high-quality growth” and “defence of national borders and interests, along with the use of “stable, if repressive, politics and high-speed economic growth.” The boss of the United Nations was quick to add: “It seems there is no consensus as to what it stands for other than being an alternative to the neoliberal Washington Consensus and the term is applied to anything that happens in Beijing, regardless of whether or not it has to do with a “Chinese Model of Development” or even with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) per se”.
When it was time for tea break, Michele Obama as charming as ever dazzled us by offering us “high tea” (scones with lashings of cream; watercress sandwiches; English muffins; smoked salmon etc). She learnt how to make it directly from Her Majesty The Queen of England when she and Barack were guests at Buckingham Palace during their state visit to England which commenced on May 24 and ended on May 26, 2011. An extra bonus was the insistence of the Duke of Edinburgh (The Queen’s husband) who spent an entire afternoon teaching her cricket, a game he gave up reluctantly not too long ago on account of old age. She has since become a great fan of test matches (when the West Indians are playing) and 20 : 20 cricket (whenever India plays against Pakistan). Amongst her favourite cricketers are the likes of Ian Bothan; Geoffrey Boycott; Richie Benaud and female cricketer Belinda Clark.
As for the book she is currently reading, it’s “Stasiland” by Anna Funder. It’s a very thoughtful birthday gift from her daughters Malia and Sasha. On its cover is the following quotation: “Stasiland by Anna Funder is a polyvocal text about individuals who resisted the East German regime and others who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. It tells the story of what it was like to work for the Stasi and describes how those who did so now come to terms, or do not, with their pasts.”
It is a matter of record that Barack Obama’s defining moment when he was campaigning to become the president of the United States of America was when he was accompanied to Berlin by Michelle in 2008 and a mammoth crowd of over 200,000 turned up not to listen to Barack but to admire and applaud Michelle for her poise and dignity – regardless of her background with roots in middle class Chicago and a black family which valued education as the route to self fulfilment and enduring intellectual curiosity. Michelle dazzled the Germans the same way Jackie Kennedy dazed the French when she accompanied her husband John Fitzgerald Kennedy on a state visit to Paris, France in 1961.
The Germans are great at football. They won the World Cup. As for cricket, it does not even exist in their language!!
However, rumour has it that there is a thriving Cricket team in the Black Forest of Germany.
As for Michelle she has dropped sufficient hints that the book she wants for Christmas is cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar’s new book: “Playing It My Way”. According to both Amazon and E-Bay it is the fastest selling book in recent times. It has broken all the records with pre-order sales of over one million copies on its first day of publication.
It is typical of Michele’s uncommon touch, generosity of spirit and compassion that last week following “Breaking News” on CNN that Australian batsman 25-year-old Phillip Hughes was in a critical condition after being hit on the top of the neck by a bouncer delivered by 22-year-old South Wales bowler Sean Abbott she did not stop at mere sympathy. Hughes was carried off on a stretcher and taken to St Vincent’s Hospital where he was put in an induced coma following surgery. It was Cricket Australia team doctor who let the cat out of the bag. Hughes was in coma for two days but a Get Well Card signed personally by the First Lady of the United States of America was by his bedside. She is clearly a great sport lover (as the English would say).
Sadly, Hughes did not recover from a go-minute operation to relieve pressure on his brains.
The Australian Prime Minister was prompt in paying a well-deserved fulsome tribute to the great batsman:
“Phillip Hughes was a young man living out his dreams. For a young life to be cut short playing our national game seems a shocking aberration. He was loved, admired and respected by his team-mates and by legions of cricket fans.”
Yesterday would have been Phillip Hughes’ 26th birthday.
At the appropriate time Michele Obama’s very thoughtful letter of condolence to the Prime Minister and the family of Phillip Hughes will be made public. For now it is sufficient to thank Michele for her concern regarding non-payment of gratuity and pension to the Senior Elder Citizens (ex-KPMG partners).
Her legal opinion on the matter was:
“It’s not cricket”!!
Howzat!!
Bashorun JK Randle is a former President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and former Chairman of KPMG Nigeria and Africa Region. He is currently the Chairman, JK Randle Professional Services.
Email:jkrandleintuk@gmail.com
— Dec. 8, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT
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