An Open Letter to Salman Butt

Dear Salman Butt,

I hope this letter finds you well, and by “well” I do mean in inexorable pain and mental agony.

My name is PakFan69. Do not mistake my pseudonym as some kind of attempt to hide my identity. Nothing would make me happier than to tell you who I am, arrange a meeting between us, and then shoot you through your spinal chord. However, I speak to you today not as an individual, but as part of a larger collective. My words are those of hundreds upon thousands of Pakistani cricket fans - hence I have chosen the alias “PakFan”. As for an explanation of the “69” part, you can ask your sister about that one.

Salman, I don’t really know how to begin this. Most of me just wants to barrage you with obscenities and insults and point out how you have absolutely no talent and have chiefly contributed to some of our heaviest losses. Yet another part of me wants to actually try to understand you. How could God create someone so devoid of talent and backbone. Surely you must have SOME redeeming feature. I don’t think it’s possible for someone to be as waste of a bunch of atoms as you. If there isn’t anything worthwhile within you, surely you would have committed suicide by now to put an end to your wretched life, right? However, a very small part of me also wants to help you Salman; to nurture you. It’s a very small part, but its there nonetheless. I want to give you a guiding hand and help you through this difficult time and try to make a man out of you. I want to do all this because when you do make something of yourself after years of trial and error, I want to be there to take you to the ground we used to visit to perfect your technique and hire two gargantuan Afghanis to gang rape and sodomise the hell out of you and, when your sore-assed body crawls over to me, gasping out “whyyy, PakFan69 bhai, why”, I can pull out the revolver with the one bullet I’ve been saving for the last couple of years for this moment and shoot you through the face with it. A small part of me would do this, Salman, because I’m assuming that kind of betrayal and death would be more painful and heartwrenching for you than anything anyone else could think of. The fact that a father figure has that kind of contempt for you would conclusively make you realize what an overall shit you are before you passed over to the next life. But, like I said, only a small part of me wants to do all that because it would take too much time.

Salman, remember when you started out your career? People… it almost nauseates me to say this… people regarded you as the next SAEED ANWAR. Its kind of like saying that Jesse Jackson is the next God. No, that analogy is not apt because Jesse Jackson has done okay for himself in his narrow sphere. Its kind of like saying Dinara Safina is the next Steffi Graf. Again not totally apt because Dinara’s won a few titles and is the Number 1 tennis player in the world. Im having trouble finding a good analogy because I cant think of any instance where someone who is such an abject failure is compared to one of the greats in his field. Usually, the person being compared has SOME redeeming quality. But, as OBA rightly pointed out, you’re good at nothing.

Why were you touted as the next Saeed Anwar? Basically because you’re a left hander. That’s it, Salman. NOTHING else about you justifies that comparison. I adored Saeed Anwar and, right off the bat (heh), I felt personally injured at the comparison being made. Saeed was beautiful to watch. Whether he was driving through the off, or flicking through leg, he was one of those players who wasn’t capable of playing an ugly shot. You seem to have it in reverse – a graceful Salman Butt shot is the Haley’s Comet of world cricket. You can only, ONLY, play through the off side. And that too, only through certain gaps and channels in that off-side. Hell, I could draw a couple of lines through the offside field which would perfectly match the trajectory of your strokes.


The comparisons to Anwar were given weight by your record against India. Sure, you’ve scored a couple of hundreds against India. Does that make you good? Ijaz Ahmed had a good record against Australia, and where is he now? Having an asthama attack behind a jail cell on charges of fraud and waiting for his conjugal visit from Salim Malik’s sister. Even that frightening outcome would be too good for you.

The whole world took notice of you when you scored a hundred and a half century IN Australia against an attack which included Glen McGrath and Shane Warne. Those greats didn’t deserve to have a gandu like you score runs against them. A lot of very intelligent cricket fans thought that this was it – finally one half of our opening conundrum has been solved. Finally, we have another world class batsman in our line-up.

But I wasn’t fooled. I recognized you for the no-talent waste of space that you are. You were dropped once in that innings in Sydney and had two close lbw shouts turned down. Plus, your century came after we had lost the series and you had no pressure on you. And hey, every fucking bharwa dog has his day. That was yours. Even Vanilla Ice had one hit song. Where the fuck is he now?



Over the course of your career, you’ve actually ADDED to your shortcomings when most people try to improve on them. You’ve managed to become the worst fielder in our team, which is saying something for a Pakistani unit. Kamran Akmal must love having you around because the number of catches you let slip through your gay fingers takes the attention off him. Isn’t human existence supposed to follow a pattern of development – don’t we add to our skills or refine the existing ones? You seem to be deteriorating as time passes by. You’re the antithesis of a fine wine.

And now here we are. Our first test match after months and our first competitive game after the heady victory at the T20 World Cup. Bravo Salman, you managed to spoil both occasions for us. There was no need for that shot after Yousuf had just gotten out. Don’t you know you’re incapable of taking the attack to good bowlers and playing outside your limited comfort zone? And, in the space of a few seconds, you’ve extinguished most of the euphoria flowing out of the T20 triumph.

Tell me Salman, make me understand how a senior batsman in the team with 5 years of experience can play with such utter disregard for the circumstances around him. Explain to me why a guy who is supposedly the most educated guy in our team refuses to learn from his mistakes and doesnt put in the hard hours in correcting the substantial glitches in his technique. I don’t get it Salman – doesn’t being such an asshole affect you? When you wake up in the morning and look at your face in the mirror, what stops you from taking your razor blade and slitting your own throat as final penance for the embarrassments you’ve subjected Pakistan cricket to?

Salman do us all a favor and please exit the team. Currently your test and one day averages sit at 28 and 38 respectively and in the last year your average is probably half that. So, by your own standards, you’d still be going out at the top of your game. You seem to be sort of educated so maybe you can get a desk job of some sort. Im sure there is SOMEthing you can do in life. It’s just not cricket.

Kind regards,

PakFan69.

p.s. I also blame you for the death of Bob Woolmer.