AGAINST THE GRAIN
Say no to India-Pak. cricket
C. RAMMANOHAR REDDY
V.V.KRISHNAN
IT is difficult to accept that you can have the same view as Bal Thackeray. But, yes, I am against the resumption of bilateral cricket contests between India and Pakistan.
The arguments in favour of regular and close cricketing contact between the two countries are familiar and they are made in many contexts. It is said that the only way relations between India and Pakistan can improve is if there is closer people-to-people contact. Today, there is so little interaction between the two neighbours that the two countries may well have been located in separate continents. Sport is one of the best avenues for facilitating people-to-people contact. And what better sport than cricket, the passion of more than one and a quarter billion people in the two countries, for bringing India and Pakistan together? Sadly, when it comes to cricket and when it is these two teams playing against each other, it does not work that way. Relations between the people of India and Pakistan seem to worsen and not improve, when the two countries are on the cricket field.
For the tens of thousands in the stadium and the millions in front of the TV, a game of passion turns into the ultimate battle between the two peoples. For far too many Indians, each game of cricket is an opportunity to teach Pakistan which is the greater nation. (Unfortunately, for every victory in a World Cup match there have been too many losses at Sharjah to forget. If we favour Sachin taking apart Shoaib in South Africa in 2003, we still cannot erase the scar of Javed Miandad's last ball six against Chetan Sharma in Sharjah in 1985.) And for far too many Pakistanis, a cricket match can be a great leveller. It is an opportunity for the country to shake off its insecurity vis-a-vis its huge neighbour and prove who is better when it comes to 11 against 11. The cricket craze becomes an opportunity for people on both sides to express their anger about the other, dredge out their bitterness about Partition, the Bangladesh war and, tragically and increasingly, display their prejudices towards minorities.
"Normal" sporting contact is supposed to bring people together. But those who make this argument forget that there have been long spells of "normal" cricket ties between the two countries. These tours helped the players get to know each other, but they brought their followers to the barricades. In the 1950s, the two teams played 10 Test matches against each other, in the 1960s, just five and in the 1990s, only three. However, between 1978 (when ties were revived after a gap of 17 years) and 1989, as many as 29 Tests were played during seven tours in 11 years. And even in one-day ties, during the 1980s, before Sharjah and Toronto took over, India and Pakistan played more one-day internationals in the two countries (18 versus 12) than in Sharjah. And did all those exchange tours "normalise" relations about cricket? No they did not. Here is one example of contact in sport not leading anywhere. The 1980s contests, one can even say, only laid the foundation for the intense anger that now seems to regularly pour out whenever the two countries contest a game of cricket. That "edge", everyone talks about when India meets Pakistan in cricket, turns into a mental bloody war.
Yes, everybody speaks about Chennai applauding the Pakistani team when it pulled off a Test win against Sachin Tendulkar in 1999. But we don't want to remember that within weeks, the "sporting" ground of Eden Gardens had to be emptied of spectators so that Pakistan could defeat India in silence in the inaugural Asian Test Championship match. Across the border, the Independence Golden Jubilee series in 1998 between India and Pakistan had to be played under the supervision of heavily armed policemen.
I was in Kolkata in March this year, on the night India beat Pakistan in the World Cup. I was spending the night in a hotel on the borders of a ramshackle part of Park Circus, which was heavily populated by poor Muslims. As I made my way back to my hotel when the game in South Africa was coming to a close, the hawkers on the pavement were scooping up their wares as if a cyclone was going to hit the city soon. I foolishly asked one of them why the sudden rush to close shop. The look of anger was enough to make me cringe with shame. On another road, on the entrance to a lane a hastily scrawled banner had been put up ("Congratulations, India") and at the entrance stood a small group of young men. This was their way of asserting their Indianness, and answering all those critics who say the minorities can only burst crackers whenever Pakistan beats India in a game of hockey. There was no violence that night when hordes honked their way through the streets of Kolkata. But there were sporadic incidents of violence in Bangalore.
Can one argue then that the people of India and Pakistan will come together if they did not play each other on the cricket field? That is a silly counter-argument. The people of the two countries have invested far too much pride in cricket to be able to accept that it is only a game played by 22 highly-paid sportspersons. Cricket contests between India and Pakistan can become normal when we see each other as friendly neighbours. Until then, like the hawker on the Kolkata pavement we can only scurry for physical and mental safety when there is a clash on the cricket field.
E-mail the writer at crr100@eudoramail.com
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
