Apparently, the romance is on the rocks again
In this space last week, Waqqas Mir narrated an interesting account of his sojourn to New Delhi for the last of three ODIs that concluded recently. As a sometime Delhi resident, I can vouch for the spectator fare and it aint pretty for a Pakistani visitor.
But first to the series. At the outset, let me say that nothing could be more welcome than the revival of bilaterals. In an ideal world, nothing would interrupt, much less stop, the absorbing spectacle that an average Indo-Pak encounter brings but then we don’t live in an ideal world.
To start with, it took an arduously long time for India to separate cricket from the usual bickering that the two neighbours get locked into from time to time. To be sure, India had good reason to be miffed over the Mumbai episode, but what was inexplicable was its contradictory approach to sporting contact with Pakistan.
While refusing to engage in bilaterals, India continued to contest against Pakistan in international cricket tournaments — ostensibly, because bunking an ICC tie in a multi-nation setting would entail punitive action.
The inconsistency was also evident in how India continued to compete against its old neighbour in other sporting disciplines even as it resorted to select engagement in cricket. There was little question of an ICC intervention given how toothless the governing body is — a reality that becomes even more pronounced before India’s financial muscle.
India relented only after the pitch redounded completely to its advantage. Contrary to its posturing, the Pakistan Cricket Board was ready to accept any deal it got from its counterpart for a re-engagement.
This is why the Board of Control for Cricket in India slotted in a puny series and that, too, during a Christmas break for the visiting English team!
Furthermore, the BCCI refused to share a penny with the PCB even though this was not exactly a home series and Pakistan Cricket has suffered immeasurably for lack of international cricket at home.
Conveniently, forsaken in the bargain was how India had already twice made short work of the ICC Future Tour Programme by not touring Pakistan.
But that is the nature of the beast. As in international geopolitics, might is pretty much right in cricket as well. Therefore, blaming India for our ills would serve little purpose; realistically speaking, we invited it on ourselves by sleeping on the job when the Sri Lankan team defied the odds to tour Pakistan in 2009.
But there’s only so much a friendly neighbour could do — the Lankans braved pressure from their mighty neighbours to be here. They even gave Pakistan a critical lead in the terrorist attack case but then excused themselves from taking the probe any further in the interest of keeping its fragile peace.
But I digress. It is against this backdrop that the Indo-Pak series took place. My information is that the Pakistani players were under strict instructions to stay cool no matter what happened on the field.
The Ishant Sharma-Kamran Akmal incident in the first T20 was a heat-of-the-moment action where the Pakistan keeper was, in fact, provoked. However, the keeper was spoken to sternly, resulting in a swift kiss-and-make up with the lanky pacer.
Small wonder that Younus Khan also took an atrocious lbw verdict in one of the ODIs on the chin. In the last ODI, Nasir Jamshed and Shoaib Malik were also done in but again, in keeping with the script, didn’t react at all.
Regardless, the Pakistani players proved themselves great ambassadors even as they defied the form book to register an emphatic victory in the ODI series besides standing on par in the T20s. Few had given them a chance of competing against the Indian batting powerhouse in its back alley even as an equal.
While the visitors returned with their reputations enhanced, the hosts were left with a lot to reflect upon, not in the least, the future of a string of key players.
It all started with the rather surprising decision by Sachin Tendulkar to retire from ODIs on the eve of a challenging series. It betrayed a certain lack of confidence, a result perhaps, of a lean run by his standards. The move contradicted the norm about players wanting to go out with a farewell sheen before home fans.
The overriding failure of the Indian batsmen, save for M S Dhoni, perhaps, explains why Sachin’s “premature” decision may, in fact, have been calculated. If the Pakistanis had not imploded in the last ODI, Dhoni may have lost his captaincy and some of the others their places.
However, the series ended on a sour note when the Indian media reported the BCCI had mixed the drinks to have Dhoni declared Man of the Match twice — against the run of play — in a bid to save his captaincy.
Having said that it is still a fragile ship. The same holds for Indo-Pak relationship as well. The recent skirmishes across the LoC have led to a war of words with some particularly nasty exchanges on the Indian electronic media.
In one instance, Arnab Goswami, the fiery editor-in-chief and presenter of Times Now TV channel, crossed all limits to tell a Pakistani panelist he should not forget “the lesson we taught to Pakistan in 1971”. TRPs yes, but is it the only game in town?
Fortunately, the two foreign ministers have exercised restraint. Hope they can stop the cricket bilaterals going on ice again.
The writer is Editor, Pique Magazine. He may be reached at kaamyabi@gmail.com