52 OUTLOOK 1 July 2019
GOODWILL HUNTING
by Girinandini SinghC
RICKET—the very word conjures up a
serene winter’s day...the plucky exploits
of men in white...windscreens billowing
in the wind...the ‘plock’ of bat meeting
ball...wild cheering of spectators...the
lengthening shadow creeping across the
ground in harmony to the waning sun (rain-spl-
o tched English summers be damned).... Yet,
with its increasing hold on people, this ideal-
ised arcadia took on the contours of faith; when
bands of eleven ‘represented’ countries, patri-
otic pride and its hand maiden, nationalism,
rea red its head. When ‘incidents’ and contro-
ver sies on the field went out of hand, statecraft
had to be deployed to stanch the flow of passion.
On the other hand, diplomacy has taken recou-
rse to cricket, to use its immense goodwill and
its incredible reach into every nook and cranny.
Elements of all this can be plainly seen as the ICC
Cricket World Cup 2019 edges to its mid-point: the
colourful fervour, raw emotions, exem plary sports-
manship and...controversies. Last week, the Inte-
rnational Cricket Council (ICC) officially requested
the BCCI to have the small insignia on Mahendra
Singh Dhoni’s gloves to be removed. An honorary lt.
colonel in the parachute regiment of the Territorial
Army, the dagger with the wings insignia is similar
to the para forces’ badge, and therefore in breach of
the ICC regulations that players can’t wear any-
thing that is related to ‘political, religious or racial
act ivities or causes’. Indeed, shades of politics have
always coloured cricket, despite efforts to keep it
clear of its innate political undercurrents.
Though ‘cricket diplomacy’ is a much-imple-
mented soft power tool in South Asia, specifically
involving India and Pakistan, the game’s most
heartwarmingly positive influence in recent years
has to do with the Afghanistan national team,
whose mature display of prodigious talent belies its
cricketing infancy. The Soviet invasion in 1979, theMujahideen fightback and victory, the Taliban
asce ndancy and their post-9/11 defeat and vicious
struggle against US-led forces meant Afghanistan
remained a war-torn country for decades, with
many of its brutalised populace spilling over its
borders in Pakistan, housed in camps in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa and in Karachi. Consequently,
cricket was the predominant sport that was played
in Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar. From all
accounts, the game had been as much a psycholog-
ical coping mechanism as physical activity. A uni-
fying medium to mould nationalist identity, in the
2000s Afghanistan went about installing the formal
framework to form a national team; by 2017 they
were awarded full member status by the ICC.
Last year, at its historic first Test series against
India, both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s opening state-
ments identified the sport as a unifying force, not-Diplomacy has striven to use the immense hold cricket has over people
FIRST RUNS The
Afghan and Indian
teams at the
former’s first Test
in Bangalore in
2018THE OTHER GLOVEMEN