Can cricket stay sane in a world gone mad?

Indian Express, 1 October 2001

The fearful events of recent weeks have brought to mind an extraordinary cricket match I was once privileged to witness in a rural hamlet some miles outside Quetta in Pakistan.

A wicket had been marked out on a dry, pebbly flat, and a boundary demarcated with little red and yellow pennants, startlingly colourful against the arid brown landscape. Someone had rigged up a rudimentary public address system powered by a car battery, and a running commentary on the match was being provided in Pakhtoon. A ragged Coca-Cola sign had been erected, not because the soft drinks multinational had actually sponsored the match, but because the organisers felt it added a touch of big-time atmosphere to the scene. Young men in shalwar kameez wielded ancient bats held together with string and balls where the seam had been restitched by hand. They batted and bowled, called to each other and raced around the rock-hard outfield with an invigorating relish.

They told me that this match was part of an “anti-drug youth cricket cup”. The aim was to raise awareness among local youth of the dangers of heroin abuse.

Now, this is a problem of fairly recent pedigree in Balochistan. Of course, poppy growing and opium smoking are venerable traditions here, but it was only after the US sponsored the construction of modern heroin processing plants just across the border in Afghanistan during the 1980s that heroin addiction became the plague it is today.

And that is why I can’t get this scene from rural Balochistan – as bucolically delightful in its way as any village green in England – out of my head. The atrocities inflicted on the people of New York and Washington should have reminded us all that we live in an interdependent world, and cricket will find no escape from that interdependency.

I grew up in New York. I was a baseball fan – a proud New York Yankee fan – long before I’d ever heard of cricket. I still have family and friends in both New York and Washington. I also have friends as close as family scattered across south Asia. George W Bush insists you’re either with him or with the terrorists. Well, I refuse to take a place in either camp, and I think most human beings feel the same.

The myriad uncertainties of the current global crisis, and in particular its unfolding impact across south Asia, ought to give pause to those in the cricket world who believe that international cricket will soon resume its normal lucrative routine. Wasim Akram spoke wisely when he explained that New Zealand’s decision not to play in Pakistan was understandable and that the Pakistani cricketers were themselves distracted by the current turmoil.

Some commentators in India seized the opportunity to berate Akram as a hypocrite because his comments on New Zealand were in such contrast to the PCB’s self-righteous objections to India’s withdrawal from competitions involving Pakistan. They miss several points. The Indian withdrawal took place before 11th September, and the world is not as it was before that date. The Indian withdrawal was made at the insistence of the Indian government and against the wishes of the Indian cricket board. And, most importantly, the Indian government (unlike the New Zealanders) was playing cheap jingoist politics with cricket. As was the PCB (which, unlike the BCCI, is an institution directly run by the state) in trying to score points against the Indians by demanding tough action by the ICC.

Having shifted its own upcoming conclave from Pakistan to Malaysia, the ICC will find it difficult to penalise Test teams for taking similar precautions. And it’s unclear why or how any members of the international cricket community should be expected to foot the bill for the revenues lost by events way beyond their control.

The unreality currently gripping the cricket world was well illustrated by the decree issued by Indian team manager Dr Mahendra Kumar Bhargava, who said that developments in the subcontinent in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in the US on September 11 would not be a permitted topic for discussion with the team. The cricketers are human beings, and they are bound to have their own thoughts and feelings about the dangers that currently face their region. I’d wonder about their sanity if they did not.

In an ugly world, cricket can seem a magical oasis, and in the current circumstances no one can be blamed for seeking refuge in it. However, the history of cricket demonstrates quite irrefutably that it is not an activity immune to the influences of an outside world; it is part and parcel of that world.

I’ve argued in the past that the biggest challenge facing cricket in south Asia is the need to resume the India-Pakistan competition in a spirit of mutual respect and an atmosphere of fun and friendship, stripped of aggressively nationalist overtones. Is anything like that dream even approachable in reality? That question will be answered only by the outcome of the present US-led military build-up. In that context, the squabble over control of the BCCI seems little but an amusing sideshow, its players and its prizes puny indeed.