1 July 2019 OUTLOOK 53
ing the Afghanistan team’s nation-building
pot ential in the face of “challenging and difficult
circumstances”. India, too, has granted Afghanistan
the use of the Greater Noida stadium outside Delhi
for training purposes, and an additional facility in
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, along with $2 billion in
developmental programmes.
Evolutionarily speaking, sports are a practical
means of channelling aggression through less vio-
lent outlets. It is in maintaining this precarious
balance that makes cricket, steeped in colonial
history, a suspicious vehicle for peddling peace. Yet,
India and Pakistan have often used cricket as an
extension to the talks table, as a means to break ice.
“Cricket has always played a crucial role in bilat-
eral India-Pakistan ties. In 2004 when we toured
Pakistan, the team was excellently welcomed and
experienced much warmth from people. The fact
that the boys were playing a crucial role as ambas-
sadors was not lost on them and they behaved in
accordance,” says former cricketer Kiran More
who was chairman of the selection committee then.
If the 2004 ‘Peace Tour’ was a notable example of
then PM Atal Behari Vajpayee using cricket for
int ernational diplomacy, a similar programme had
been previously attempted in 1979 under the
Morarji Desai government, where Vajpayee was
foreign minister. In 2004, as attempts were made
“to establish peaceful, friendly and cooperative rel-
ations”, including the Samjhauta Express resuming
operations, it was thought that the Indian team’s
tour of Pakistan would bolster amity. Perhaps that’s
why on the heels of a momentous tour with Aus-
tralia, the Men in Blue had to embark on another
one with Pakistan. It was a resounding success.
While a cricket tour between the two nations
elicited sportsmanship—much of which ripened
into lasting friendships—among the players, it
wasn’t always the same for fans, spectators, even
occasionally the political class. In 1952, when
Pakistan first toured India under the captaincy of
Abdul Hafeez Kardar, it was to a tense welcome.
Two years later, when India reciprocated that visit
under the leadership of Vinoo Mankad, the reac-
tion was equally circumspect. National feelings
post-1947 had seeped into cricket, with passionate
fans on both sides of the border regarding a match
as proxy war. The wars of ’65 and ’71 forced a gap of
17 years when the two countries didn’t play each
other. Only in 1978 did cricket resume, becoming a
driving force for bilateral goodwill. India-Pakistan
ties, as is known, moves in cycles. A further diplo-
matic use of cricket was availed of by former presi-
dent Zia ul-Haq in 1987, during Pakistan’s tour to
India. After a lukewarm ’90s, cricketing ties snap-
ped after the Kargil conflict in 1999, to be lifted in
the noughties. However, that wouldn’t last: political
compulsions meant an ice age was to clamped
down again—something that continues. Sur ely, the
repetitive start-and-stops in India-Pakistan cricket
relations have made the sport the unofficial barom-
eter measuring ties between the states.B
ECAUSE of international cricket’s wide app-
eal and saturation coverage by the media, it
has been subject to violence too, as it was in
March 2009, when the Sri Lankan team
came under attack on their way to the Qadaffi
stadium for a Test match against Pakistan. On
the heels of the Mumbai terror attacks, Pakistan
copped a lot of blame for the incident, and inter-
national cricket hasn’t still returned to Pakistan,
doing irreparable damage to the game there.
It is, however, fair to say that in a cricketing bal-
ance sheet of good pitted against the unsavoury,
the forces of goodwill has triumphed. Cricket has
empowered peoples subjected to the indignity of
colonialism in India, Pakistan, West Indies and
South Africa, becoming a veritable statement of
equality where oppressors were beaten at their
own game. South Africa was for a long time boy-
cotted by the cricket world because of its apartheid
policies, and in 1992 India, led by Mohammed
Azharuddin, welcomed a post-apartheid South
Africa into the global cricketing fold. “It was his-
toric because India was the first country to extend
their hand to South Africa,” says More.
For all the fellow-feeling, politics does impinge on
cricket. After the Pulwama attacks, India threat-
ened to boycott its match against Pak istan in the
World Cup. This was a new spin on the state use of
cricket—a bid to increase pressure and bring about
political action through lateral means. Once used
as a tool to foster good ties, is cricket amenable to
hard-nosed diplomacy? An emphatic ans wer, like
a crisply struck cover drive, is still awaited. OMELTING POINT
Former Pakistan
president Gen.
Musharraf with
then PM
Manmohan Singh at
Ferozeshah Kotla,
Delhi, in 2005India and
Pakistan
have used
cricket to
mend ties.
The threat to
boycott a
World Cup
match after
Pulwama
was a new
tactic.NARENDRA BISHT