The Hindu : National : `Cancel tour if Pakistan refuses to play in Ahmedabad'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 14, 2005

National

National

`Cancel tour if Pakistan refuses to play in Ahmedabad'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 13. The deputy leader and spokesman of the BJP Parliamentary Party, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, on Sunday said the Pakistan cricket team's tour of India should be called off if the visiting side refused to play in Ahmedabad.

Mr. Malhotra, who is also a vice president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), said his party wanted the tour to go on without a hitch. But he warned: "We will not tolerate any blackmail and the attempt to create fissures in our society." He hoped that "good sense would prevail" with the Pakistani authorities and a Test match, as originally scheduled, would be played in Ahmedabad.

Mr. Malhotra said there could be no security fears in Ahmedabad, as suggested by the Pakistani side, and pointed out that the West Indies and New Zealand had played there in recent years. He also cited a few examples of Pakistani delegations participating in sports and other meets in Ahmedabad recently. He said that after having mentioned "political reasons" as the main hurdle for playing in Ahmedabad, the Pakistanis had suddenly shifted to the "security" angle in a city, which was "totally peaceful."

It would be wrong, Mr. Malhotra said, on the part of Pakistan to go back three years in time and cite the incidents that happened in Gujarat. "You can't keep going back in history" if one wanted to foster good relations between countries, he said.

Reviving sporting ties

He recalled the efforts of the previous National Democratic Alliance Government to revive sporting ties with Pakistan. It was at the initiative of the then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, that the Indian cricket team had played in Karachi and Peshawar "against all odds." By then, the Australian and New Zealand teams had refused to play in Pakistan because of security reasons. India had also sent its largest-ever contingent to participate in the Islamabad SAF Games in April last year "without a second thought about security" or any related matter.

"Pakistan should not forget that last December, Australia refused to play in [the] Champions Trophy hockey [match] at Lahore citing security reasons. It was again India which bailed out the Pakistani organisers by sending its team," he said in a statement. Keeping all these examples in mind, Pakistan should also reciprocate and not make an issue of playing in Ahmedabad because of political or security reasons, he said.

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