Pak media stages walkout after Lawson fires salvo

SETTING RULES: Pakistan coach infuriated journalists by trying to set ground rules to ask questions.

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Karachi: Being Pakistan's coach can be a taxing job. One does not just have to deal with controversies within the team, handling a ballistic media can be demanding too. Geoff Lawson got a first hand experience of just that as journalists walked out of a press conference after he laid down some ground rules.

It was a normal post match press conference as the Pakistan coach came to answer the media after Pakistan's second loss in the Asia Cup. But before starting the press conference, Lawson wanted to set the rules.

"A couple of rules before we start. Don't make statements, ask questions. If someone asks the question twice, I won't answer it. And make your question sensible, otherwise I won't answer. Okay?" he said.

Now that has never worked and Pakistan media didn't take it lying down. Lawson staged a walk-out before realising the situation could boomerang into a big controversy, and came back again. But by that time it was too late, and the offended Pakistan media were staging their own walk-out.

"If we are not asking sensible questions, he has no right to hold a press conference. That's why we took a stance and boycotted this. Win or defeat is a part and parcel of the game," sports journalist Shahid Hashmi, who was present at the time of the incident, says.

Indiscipline, doping scandals ,selection inconsistencies and the Pakistan team's inconsistent run has forced the media to ask some tough questions. The team management and the media have clashed on more than one occasion in the past. And after Pakistan's lopsided defeat against Sri Lanka, Lawson was aware he was in for some tough ones.

"I was rather surprised with Lawson's behaviour, because he is an international coach and he has been a former player. I would have expected him to behave in a calm manner," recalls sports writer Waheed Khan.

It is quite often that the team management and the media don't look eye to eye because one's job is to ask questions, while the other's is to give answers. Consistent failures of the Pakistan team may have prompted Geoff Lawson to avoid tough questions, but this time, the media had an answer of their own.

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