LONDON: In a dramatic turn of events at the Old Bailey, Urfan Sharif confessed to the murder of his 10-year-old daughter, Sara Sharif, admitting in court that he “takes full responsibility” for her tragic death.

Sharif detailed the brutal treatment he inflicted upon the girl, acknowledging he beat her with a cricket bat and metal pole, leading to her death on Aug 8, 2023, days before her body was discovered in their Surrey home.

The confession came during cross-examination by Caroline Carberry KC, who asked him bluntly if he had killed her by beating. “Yes, she died because of me,” Sharif responded. He revealed that he had struck Sara “severely” over several weeks, reportedly because he was angered by her frequent episodes of soiling herself and vomiting.

Sharif, 42, his wife, Beinash Batool, 30 and his brother Faisal Malik, 29, all facing charges related to what prosecutors have described as a “campaign of abuse” against Sara. The trio fled to Pakistan shortly after Sara’s death, with Sharif later calling the British police to confess he had “beat her up too much”.

A handwritten note, found near Sara’s fully clothed body, further documented Sharif’s admission, stating: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”

Medical examination reports presented to the court were harrowing. Sara’s postmortem revealed 71 external injuries, including fractures, burns, and bite marks.

When confronted with images of Sara’s injuries, Sharif appeared unable to look, repeatedly saying, “I accept everything,” as Carberry questioned him on the details of his alleged actions.

The prosecution presented a disturbing video clip from Aug 6, showing Sara dancing just two days before her death. Despite this glimpse of her lively spirit, Sharif admitted to brutally beating her that same evening.

The defence team for Sharif later sought a private consultation with him in court, delaying further proceedings.

The trial, however, continues, with Sharif and co-defendants maintaining not guilty pleas to the charges of murder and causing or allowing the child’s death.

Cross-examination

During the hearing, Carberry asked: “Do you accept that you had been beating Sara severely over a number of weeks?” He replied: “Yes, ma’am.”

He went on to accept attacking Sara with a cricket bat repeatedly and causing 25 fractures to her body.

Carberry continued: “I want to ask you about the occasions when you assaulted her with a cricket bat. What had she done to deserve such beatings in your mind?”

Sharif replied: “Nothing.”

She asked: “Why were you beating her so forcefully?”

He replied: “I was wrong.”

She continued: “Were you angry with her because in the summer of last year, she had started soiling herself?”

He replied: “Yes ma’am.”

She added: “And she had started vomiting, hadn’t she?” to which Sharif replied: “Yes, ma’am.”

Carberry asked: “And when she was sick you would get angry? And when she soiled herself you would get angry?” He replied: “Yes ma’am.”

He accepted causing injuries to Sara’s face and head by beating her with the bat and metal pole on 6 Aug.

Carberry continued: “You have pleaded not guilty to the offence of murder. Would you like that charge to be put to you again?”

He replied: “Yes ma’am.”

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024

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I had the fortune of landing a ticket for Saturday's quarter final match between Sri Lanka and England. Someone who had 2 grandstand tickets got sick and I was lucky to be asked whether I want it at list price :). At Rs. 4000 each I felt they were pricey but then at the event I met a friend who had paid double that for his ticket! I will comment on the ticket selling process later.

First of all, the stadium atmosphere was just incredibly amazingly fantastically electric and rocking. Being there is nothing like watching at home .. despite being able to see the match poorly, the environment is of course unbeatable. The fact that Sri Lanka gave England a total drubbing was awesome, even though as a result the game became quite non-competitive .. but I'll settle for non-competitive games up to the final and thrilling victory in the final (vs. to have it stolen like the last time).

This post is not about the quarter final match - its about Sri Lanka Cricket, the embattled organization which runs the sport in Sri Lanka.

As most people in Sri Lanka know, the organizers were hammered very very hard in the press before the World Cup started about their preparations, about how the stadiums were completed last minute and about every aspect of team selection to overall management. I'm not an expert on cricket- so I have no useful views on the cricketing aspects and will leave them alone. However, I do want to comment on the overall organization of the event.

I have made it to 3 matches in Colombo - the first was the loss to Pakistan, the second the rained out draw with Australia and the third of course the drubbing of England.

All these were held at the newly refurbished Kettarama Stadium of course- an absolutely AWESOME stadium now! I have been there a few months ago and it was a nightmare to get in and out. Now its a breeze and reminds me of the convenience of getting in and out of Purdue's Mackey Arena (for basketball). Once you are inside, the view is breathtaking. The atmosphere is amazingly electric. Every match was sold out (of course) to a capacity crowd of 35,000+.

I didn't make it to Hambantota for the first match but the news from there was that the brand new stadium there was absolutely amazing as well. The words from a friend (usually a skeptic) was "money well spent".

Same has to be said for Pallekalle in Kandy. That's again a new stadium (or a refurb'ed old ground; not sure) and while its not as built up as Hambantota or Colombo the location is just amazing and all the reports are that the place was fantastic.

There was not a single time in all the matches in Sri Lanka where something went wrong with the logistics. All the comentators have been giving kudos about the venues and the amazing environments offered by them.

I too was caught up in the press vendetta against Suraj Dandeniya (the head of the World Cup organizing team in SLC). While the work was indeed completed last minute it is time to give this gentleman a tip of the hat and acknowledge the amazing work they have done to deliver perfectly for Sri Lanka. Press  stories have a way of finding individuals guilty without judge or jury and this vendetta was played out by most of the newspapers in a merciless manner. Maybe Suraj has refused some passes for the press and their buddies? Who knows.

Yes yes I know there's one more match to be played in Sri Lanka. That's the one where Sri Lanka will whack the New Zealanders home :-). I am confident that too will go off without a hitch! At one level "may the best team win" may apply but, honestly, to hell with that .. Sri Lanka has to win to set up an amazing final in India against (most probably) India. Nothing like that victory!

(The NZ team has done amazingly well to get to the semi-finals and they've always stepped up big at the big occasions. Their country also suffered a massive earthquake recently .. only to be overshadowed by an even bigger one. If they go on to winning the tournament they'll again get some all-important PR for the recovery efforts there. To that extent I want NZ to win. Yeah, treacherous.)

Now about those ticket sales.

Fundamentally, this is a no-win situation for the organizers. 35,000 tickets for the match where 500,000 at least would love to watch in person. So no matter what approach is taken, there will be 465,000+ who will be crying foul!

There have been stories about how people stood in line, bought the ticket and turned around and sold it to someone else. I see no way to stop that - and keeping the ticket price low (lowest was Rs. 50 for group stage matches in Colombo) meant that anyone could buy them without any problem - a good thing in general.

Personally I have no issue with blackmarket sales (and I don't understand why they are banned) - the only problem it highlights is that the original ticket was sold too low! Why doesn't Sri Lanka Cricket sell the ticket for Rs. 10,000 if it can get away with it and make more money? Maybe they should've also set up an auction at EBay or something where people can bid and buy tickets at whatever price above the minimum price. No I'm not suggesting doing that for all tickets but rather for a percentage- you give some on a pure lottery, some for those who stand in line .. and the rest to the best price via auction with batches sold daily. I don't understand why they created a secondary market in the first place when they themselves could've run both the primary and secondary markets. Obviously I don't know enough about market economics.

The real problem is that many tickets seem to have been sold only to "known parties". The Colombo powers-that-be who want to watch the matches shouldn't have been able to buy through back channels. If they don't want to stand in line they can certainly afford to buy the tickets on the blackmarket if they want and let some poor guy make some money. Why should these fat cats be able to buy tickets at list?!

When you are at the match (and I went to A lower the first time (Rs. 250), to C upper the second time (Rs. 100) and to the grand stand for the quarter final (Rs. 4000) its clear that most in attendance were way above average in economic terms. In practical terms, that suggests that a lot of blackmarket sales were happening. If someone's a true fan, there's no amount of money that would make them sell the ticket - so the people who sold the tickets were not real fans. Or they were true fans who felt the money was more economically valuable for them than the experience (maybe they had a sick child or needed some home repairs or whatever ..). Or they were savvy businessmen who stood in line and sold the ticket for a profit. The bottom line is that there's no way to prevent normal capitalism from taking place and the value balance ending up wherever it ends up.

So while I too am frustrated I can't get a ticket for the semi-finals, I am only upset about connected people getting tickets at list price through backchannel means. The rest of the system I have no concerns with - and next time (20-20 World Cup next year) I hope Sri Lanka Cricket does a combination of lines, lotteries and auctions to sell the tickets.

Talking about tickets .. anyone have a spare grandstand ticket for the semi final they want to sell me at list price? :-)

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This is the 24th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

Back in the last decade, I was a cricket journalist for a few years. Then, around 12 years ago, I quit. I was jaded as hell. Every game seemed like déjà vu, nothing new, just another round on the treadmill. Although I would remember her fondly, I thought me and cricket were done.

And then I fell in love again. Cricket has changed in the last few years in glorious ways. There have been new ways of thinking about the game. There have been new ways of playing the game. Every season, new kinds of drama form, new nuances spring up into sight. This is true even of what had once seemed the dullest form of the game, one-day cricket. We are entering into a brave new world, and the team leading us there is England. No matter what happens in the World Cup final today – a single game involves a huge amount of luck – this England side are extraordinary. They are the bridge between eras, leading us into a Golden Age of Cricket.

I know that sounds hyperbolic, so let me stun you further by saying that I give the IPL credit for this. And now, having woken up you up with such a jolt on this lovely Sunday morning, let me explain.

Twenty20 cricket changed the game in two fundamental ways. Both ended up changing one-day cricket. The first was strategy.

When the first T20 games took place, teams applied an ODI template to innings-building: pinch-hit, build, slog. But this was not an optimal approach. In ODIs, teams have 11 players over 50 overs. In T20s, they have 11 players over 20 overs. The equation between resources and constraints is different. This means that the cost of a wicket goes down, and the cost of a dot ball goes up. Critically, it means that the value of aggression rises. A team need not follow the ODI template. In some instances, attacking for all 20 overs – or as I call it, ‘frontloading’ – may be optimal.

West Indies won the T20 World Cup in 2016 by doing just this, and England played similarly. And some sides began to realise was that they had been underestimating the value of aggression in one-day cricket as well.

The second fundamental way in which T20 cricket changed cricket was in terms of skills. The IPL and other leagues brought big money into the game. This changed incentives for budding cricketers. Relatively few people break into Test or ODI cricket, and play for their countries. A much wider pool can aspire to play T20 cricket – which also provides much more money. So it makes sense to spend the hundreds of hours you are in the nets honing T20 skills rather than Test match skills. Go to any nets practice, and you will find many more kids practising innovative aggressive strokes than playing the forward defensive.

As a result, batsmen today have a wider array of attacking strokes than earlier generations. Because every run counts more in T20 cricket, the standard of fielding has also shot up. And bowlers have also reacted to this by expanding their arsenal of tricks. Everyone has had to lift their game.

In one-day cricket, thus, two things have happened. One, there is better strategic understanding about the value of aggression. Two, batsmen are better equipped to act on the aggressive imperative. The game has continued to evolve.

Bowlers have reacted to this with greater aggression on their part, and this ongoing dialogue has been fascinating. The cricket writer Gideon Haigh once told me on my podcast that the 2015 World Cup featured a battle between T20 batting and Test match bowling.

This England team is the high watermark so far. Their aggression does not come from slogging. They bat with a combination of intent and skills that allows them to coast at 6-an-over, without needing to take too many risks. In normal conditions, thus, they can coast to 300 – any hitting they do beyond that is the bonus that takes them to 350 or 400. It’s a whole new level, illustrated by the fact that at one point a few days ago, they had seven consecutive scores of 300 to their name. Look at their scores over the last few years, in fact, and it is clear that this is the greatest batting side in the history of one-day cricket – by a margin.

There have been stumbles in this World Cup, but in the bigger picture, those are outliers. If England have a bad day in the final and New Zealand play their A-game, England might even lose today. But if Captain Morgan’s men play their A-game, they will coast to victory. New Zealand does not have those gears. No other team in the world does – for now.

But one day, they will all have to learn to play like this.

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
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