Professionalism exemplified...

The wordweb definition of Professionalism goes as 'The expertness characteristic of a professional person'. Not too complicated to infer the meaning and apply it to our everyday lives. So, when someone says that, he is a IT Professional, it means he is expert in the IT field and in the given field/realm, he would behave in a responsible and mature manner. Bringing shame/disrespect of any kind to the organisation or the professional community of which you are part of, can result in adverse reactions and follow ups.

Mind you, the act because of which your organisation may take action might not be directly linked to your professional misdemeanor. I for one, am of a personal opinion that there should be some leverage to all professionals, in every walk of life. Quantifying this leverage is open to debate and has to be taken on a case to case basis. Coming from an IT background, we all know that as professionals we are supposed to be working on our respective projects for around 8 hours a day, pack up and leave. But are we being thorough professionals? From my experience in the past 4 years or so, may be 10% of the entire lot are thorough professionals, or even less. But, many of us, at some point of the day do check our personal emails, do read the news sites, check our bank accounts, the share market or even chat with friends and family. But there has to be a line somewhere, isnt it? This is where, the organisation employing the professional comes into the picture.

In the internet era, where communication is just a click away, there is always a threat of some employee bringing bad reputation by not behaving professionally and more importantly irresonposibly.

And yes, there are these kind of people everywhere, in every walk of life in every profession. The political sphere has ample people that we can look up as examples!! More realistically, we must be knowing someone who was punished for his erroneous behaviour and given a diktat of some form or the other. In sports, we have all seen players punished for being un-professinal. This behaviour may not necessarily be on the field. Even off the field events are taken seriously and players reprimanded more often than not. Let is be Andrew Flintoff (drunk and floating in water) or Zizou (head butting), all have faced the wrath at some point or the other.

But today, when I read, Mr.Aisf's story on the web, I realised one thing. For long, Ive always had my doubts about cricket being a clean game. For all those who prefer to live in the bubble, please do so. But deep down, every single person who hs followed cricket and is following it know, it was tainted, is tainted and always will be. There are truckload of reasons, I can write another 2 complete days and I still will not be done. But, Mr.Asif, a professional cricketer, who played in the PROFESSIONAL LEAGUE, IPL, is carrying with him some 'Hakeem' given substance in his wallet. He is caught at the airport and he says he does not know what it is made of. I mean, for heavens sake, you are a bloody professional player. Every substance you carry, consume, inhale, drink matters! May be not in cricket, but in most other sports. Sometimes you get away, but sooner or later your luck is gonna run out. It is during this bad hour that the 'fake' sport called cricket comes to the rescude and cleanses the offenders of all their sins. To add to the mess, this same player was cleared of all DRUG charges after his blood sample tested positive during a dope test. Why he was cleared, how it happened are questions no one really has answers to? To be frank, cricket fans dont really care. Do they? Another bright example of unprofessionalism in the sport is the sudden dropping of the ban of one Mr.Shoaib Akhtar. We all know why this was done, the Badshah from Bandra pulled the strings!!! This guy, has done everything that a HUMAN being should not do. Let alone a professional sportsperson, but his conduct puts a 3 year to shame... But, the professional sport that cricket is, Mr.Akhtar gets another chance to beat someone ohhh.. that was Mr.Asif was'nt it??? One big mess ... i call it cricket!

P.S: Please note, my writing is based on cricket, because all i get to read online on Indian news sites is based on this 'fake' professional sport called cricket.