There was more than a tinge of symbolism in the fact that just four days before Pakistan and India clashed in the most anticipated – albeit equally lopsided – encounter of the ongoing Champions Trophy, Afghanistan cancelled “mutual cricketing relationships” with Pakistan.
The Afghanistan Cricket Board’s (ACB) statement from May 31 came “in light of findings of security services and calls by the Afghan people” following the suicide blast in Kabul’s diplomatic district, which killed at least 90 people and wounded over 400 others.
The ACB, much like the Afghan government, security agencies and media, held Pakistan accountable for an attack that was traced to the Haqqani Network, which has long been alleged to have found safe havens in Pakistani territory.
What made the ACB announcement even more shocking was that only a week before the severing of cricketing ties, an Afghanistan Cricket delegation, including the board chairman Atif Mashal, had visited Pakistan and finalised a two-match T20 series to be played in Kabul and Lahore.
In a press briefing Mashal had stressed on the need to “keep cricket away from politics”. 10 days later similar rhetoric was aired in most parts of the subcontinent, when India and Pakistan were playing each other at Edgbaston on June 4.
It doesn’t take much research to discern how ACB’s reaction to a gruesome terror attack is virtually identical to what the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has customarily displayed over the past couple of decades.
Now, there are two ways of looking at this. First, that this underscores what Islamabad has maintained all along – i.e. New Delhi’s influence over Kabul, which has meant that Afghanistan is echoing the Indian stance, in all areas of bilateral ties with Pakistan. Second, that Pakistan’s ties with Afghanistan have deteriorated to such an extent that they mirror Islamabad’s perpetually acrimonious relationship with New Delhi.
No prizes for guessing what Islamabad’s official stance is. That India is trying to encircle Pakistan with a stranglehold in Afghanistan – and then Iran – has been maintained by Islamabad since circa 1971.
The feel good factor in the build up to the Indo-Pak Champions League game further underscores how Pak-Afghan ties have simply gone pear-shaped. And this needs stressing: four days after the cricket boards of Afghanistan and Pakistan had engaged in excruciating trash talk, a lot of the noise in the subcontinent was about how the Champions Trophy clash is an example of cricket defeating politics.
So basically, even if for a brief moment in time, Pakistan’s cricketing relations with India were better than they are with Afghanistan.
Let’s get the obvious off the table: this is not about cricket at all. Refusing to play cricket amidst diplomatic turmoil is a tactic India has regularly exercised to single out Pakistan as the culprit over bilateral troubles. This singling out has further been facilitated by the fact that Pakistan has never reciprocated the gesture, even amidst surges in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Similarly, Afghanistan doing the same has zero considerations for cricket and is a ploy to highlight Pakistan as the sole culprit, despite Islamabad’s claims of cross border terrorism emanating from Afghanistan matching Kabul’s. Even so, despite cricket being an excuse for antagonistic gestures, what makes the situation arguably worse than the plunging cricket diplomacy vis-à-vis India, are the respective standings of the two sides in question.
Despite the fluctuation in dominance over the Indo-Pak cricket rivalry, neither of the two states has ever been a minnow with respect to the other. For Afghanistan, playing with Pakistan would not only be a great learning experience for the cricket side, but would further add to the profile of the national team, as they gradually climb the pecking order. This is how Pakistan helped Bangladesh get Test status.
Also, let’s not forget it was former Pakistan captain, and current chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq who coached Afghanistan to the Super 10s of last year’s World Twenty20, which put Afghanistan on the cricket map. It was only last month that Younis Khan was said to be taking up the Afghanistan coach’s position as his first assignment post-retirement.
Despite valid criticism of Islamabad’s security policies, which have damaged Pakistan itself more than any other neighbouring state, the ACB’s reaction was out of line, and would only fuel claims of Kabul mimicking New Delhi in dealing with Islamabad.
If the aim was to deliver a message to Pakistan, cancelling a couple of friendly cricket matches not even scheduled to be played anytime soon, would hardly result in much introspection. In fact, it smacks of a rush towards an action – any action – that could be sold as resolve against terrorism, shrouding the state’s own counter-terror failures. In that regard, it was Kabul instinctively mimicking Islamabad, more so than anyone else.