RevSportz Comment
When India and Pakistan were at war in 1971, Sunil Gavaskar, Bishan Singh Bedi and Intikhab Alam – all playing for the Rest of the World against Australia down under – would gather around a transistor radio and listen to updates from the conflict. More than three decades later, even in the aftermath of the Kargil War, it wasn’t uncommon to see Indian and Pakistani cricketers going out for dinner together. But there was no thought of breaking bread over the past three weeks in the United Arab Emirates, as politics and sport collided as never before in this always-fraught rivalry.
Border skirmishes and conflict have been a reality of life for every citizen, on both sides of the border. But something changed earlier this year. Ask most Indians to find Kargil on a map, and they might struggle. A generation remembers seeing some video footage from those remote, faraway peaks, but it was never in your face like Pahalgam. Just as the image of the naked Phan Thị Kim Phúc fleeing from a napalm attack became a tragic emblem of the Vietnam war, few Indians will ever be able to forget the picture of a recently married woman cradling her husband’s lifeless body. For millions, that was the proverbial last straw.
It is now almost eight decades since George Orwell described international sport and the Olympics as ‘war minus the shooting’ in the Tribune (December 1945). It’s nearly 30 years since the late Mike Marquesee wrote a book of that name on the 1996 World Cup hosted by the subcontinent. But even then, it was an abstract concept. At no point in the 73 years that India and Pakistan have played cricket was the atmosphere as toxic as it was in Dubai this month.
India’s decision to skip the toss and post-match handshakes was unprecedented. In the face of outrage back home over sharing the same turf as Pakistan, the cricket establishment took a studied decision. A boycott was impossible, given India’s global sporting ambitions, but the time to pretend that things were normal, and that sport could exist in a vacuum had long passed.
This is the new normal, and it’s likely to stay that way until Pakistan decides to stop sponsoring terror. The situation was made infinitely worse by Mohsin Naqvi, who while wearing his hats as Interior Minister and the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) forgot that he also headed the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). An administrator with a more statesmanlike approach, like the late Shaharyar Khan, would have appealed for calm and tried to defuse the situation. Naqvi poured petrol on the flames and chucked in a Molotov cocktail or two for good measure.
The stand-off over Andy Pycroft, the match referee, which nearly saw Pakistan forfeit their game against the UAE, was the worst example of Naqvi’s brinkmanship, with the man prepared to jeopardise the tournament he was supposed to be conducting. The trophy presentation fiasco was an apt ending to a chaotic tournament. The best team, by a distance, won, but never have we seen a tournament organised and conducted in such chaotic fashion.
When he wasn’t sharing provocative tweets or supporting his players as they made offensive on-field gestures, Naqvi was crying wolf at every opportunity. It will be fascinating to see how the ACC deals with the aftermath.
Over a century ago, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern-day Olympic movement, said: “Athletics can bring into play both the noblest and the basest passions … they can be used to strengthen peace or to prepare for war.” What we saw at the Asia Cup – machine-gun celebration and crashed-plane references, among other things – had little to do with peace. Unfortunately for India and Pakistan, that may be the new normal.
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