More than the sum of scorecards
Cricket has always been a political affair. What keeps it in the ranks of some of the more athletic sports is its rich history of challenging power. However, for some caretakers like the BCCI, the default path has been one of least resistance, as shown by its indifference to Shiv Sena’s recent aggression
Word now is that there is still a possibility of India showing up this winter for an away series with Pakistan on their make-do “home” ground in Dubai. It hangs on the slim thread of sound bytes by BCCI grandees, spun mostly to keep the news cycle ticking — but for those of us who cannot understand why the India-Pakistan bilateral series is not an inviolable way of sport, it may be just enough to keep hope afloat. And hope counts because whichever way you look at it, this has not been a good week for Indian cricket.
Indian cricket’s headquarters in Mumbai was stormed by Shiv Sena activists determined to prevent a scheduled meeting between Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Shashank Manohar and Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Shahryar Khan. The Sena’s hostility to Pakistan’s sportspersons has a formidable history, so it was a matter of mere minutes before Mr. Manohar got the message. So far, so predictable.
What followed was not as predictable. The International Cricket Council (ICC) withdrew umpire Aleem Dar, a Pakistani national, from the ongoing India-South Africa series. The last of five one-day internationals is to be played on October 25 at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. The ICC said, “Under the present circumstances, it will be unreasonable to expect from Aleem that he will be able to perform his duties to the best of his abilities.”
BCCI’s reluctance
Following that, two former cricketers, Wasim Akram and Shoaib Akhtar, both from Pakistan, opted out as television commentators from the Mumbai fixture. You could say that they were taking their cue from the ICC decision to withdraw Mr. Dar. It is argued, very persuasively in my opinion, that the ICC should have let Mr. Dar be and left the onus of protecting the Mumbai match, and its participants, on the hosts. In any case, once Mr. Dar was out, other Pakistani stakeholders stood more vulnerably conspicuous. And the BCCI, the host board, was not exactly straining to make anybody — anybody — feel more welcome, or reassured.
Following that, two former cricketers, Wasim Akram and Shoaib Akhtar, both from Pakistan, opted out as television commentators from the Mumbai fixture. You could say that they were taking their cue from the ICC decision to withdraw Mr. Dar. It is argued, very persuasively in my opinion, that the ICC should have let Mr. Dar be and left the onus of protecting the Mumbai match, and its participants, on the hosts. In any case, once Mr. Dar was out, other Pakistani stakeholders stood more vulnerably conspicuous. And the BCCI, the host board, was not exactly straining to make anybody — anybody — feel more welcome, or reassured.
For the BCCI, the default path is one of least resistance. And even those of us who have no particular affection for cricket, and its excesses, must question the Board’s acquiescence to politics that inhibits true sportsmanship on the field of play.
There is a reason why sport can demand, and win, exceptionalism in attracting financial assistance. It is not just the ancient compact to enable humankind to be faster, higher, stronger. A sporting encounter is an assertion of essential values, that once the sportspersons are in the arena of competition, certain rules will apply, free of expediency and whim. Let alone athletes and judges/umpires, this is why even accredited media-persons at an Olympics do not need visas from the host country. To compete, to judge and to witness — the three together make sport the signifier of dignity that it is. By failing to step in and stand by the India-South Africa series’s deputed stakeholders, the umpire and commentators, the BCCI has failed cricket.
We’ve been in this sorry situation before. The Board has, in the past as well, desisted from fulfilling its moral duty to stand by the stakeholders; it has failed to step forward to say that the game would be moved from the venue if their participation could not be protected.
In 2013, following objections by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa to the participation of Sri Lankans in the Indian Premier League (IPL), no team fielded Sri Lankan cricketers in matches in Chennai. Forget about issuing a warning that Chennai matches would be shifted out, there was not even an apology to Sri Lankan cricketers or to cricket fans over Chepauk being denied the presence of cricketers like Kumar Sangakkara. Ironically, Mr. Sangakkara had, in the past, stood up to very same Mahinda Rajapaksa whose government’s actions the Tamil Nadu politicians were protesting.
It was in 2013 that Pakistani women cricketers were packed off to Cuttack, which large-heartedly welcomed them, because Mumbai, originally the venue for all Women’s World Cup matches, wouldn’t. In each case, it was the cricketers who retained as much dignity for the sport as they could by refusing to force a confrontation. For the authorities, it was cricket as usual.
The Board’s indifference may continue. In another rebuff, Pakistan Blind Cricket Council (PBCC) has withdrawn its team from next year’s Asia Cup to be held in India. India also hosts the ICC World Twenty20 in 2016, for which Shahryar Khan has said Pakistan will now “have to review the security situation”.
In any case, as India keeps bidding for different ICC tournaments, will the BCCI factor in the hostility of particular governments/groups to particular nationalities while finalising the schedule? Even on the few occasions when India has hosted Pakistan for a bilateral series, Mumbai has been kept out of the circuit. Oh, and without letting people know exactly why, IPL teams have long stopped bidding for Pakistani players.
Complicit in exclusion
Party politics that makes sportspersons unwelcome hate objects is an ugly spectacle, and its larger repercussions must worry us deeply. But when we fail to support — and use — sport as a repudiation of that very ugliness, we fail sport and ourselves. When we shrug in resignation and let matches be tailored to a politics of exclusion, we dissociate ourselves from sport’s more noble history.
Party politics that makes sportspersons unwelcome hate objects is an ugly spectacle, and its larger repercussions must worry us deeply. But when we fail to support — and use — sport as a repudiation of that very ugliness, we fail sport and ourselves. When we shrug in resignation and let matches be tailored to a politics of exclusion, we dissociate ourselves from sport’s more noble history.
Take India-Pakistan cricket itself. In 1996, when the World Cup was jointly hosted by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, two teams, Australia and the West Indies, chose to forfeit their matches to be played in Sri Lanka and cited the security situation there. At practically a moment’s notice, India and Pakistan fielded a united team for a solidarity match with Sri Lanka. It is a gesture that ultimately redeemed the World Cup campaign for India.
All these years later, we can project that self-affirming gesture on the tournament-eve against the griminess of the semi-final in Kolkata, when spectators reacted violently to the prospect of India’s defeat, forcing the match to be abandoned. Sri Lanka won it default.
This is why I find it absurd when the demand is made that politics be kept away from cricket. Cricket, at its best, has always been a political affair, in a larger, less partisan sense of the word. Amid its current excesses and complete deviations from its purer Test match proprieties, as too its frequent approximation to a made-for-television spectacle, what sustains it in the ranks some of the other, more athletic sports is its rich history of challenging power.
Anti-imperial effort
Cricket’s role in crafting an anti-imperial narrative is well-known. In his moving foreword to a recent book about West Indies cricket (Fire in Babylon, by Simon Lister), Clive Lloyd explains why excelling at cricket mattered: “It sounds simple, unremarkable even, but when you consider our painful history, the bitter impositions forced upon those who came before us and the particular ordeals that the inhabitants of the Caribbean have had to overcome each day of their lives, you can begin to understand why winning cricket matches for the West Indies meant so much to us all… As the great writer C.L.R. James put it, we had entered the comity of nations.”
Cricket’s role in crafting an anti-imperial narrative is well-known. In his moving foreword to a recent book about West Indies cricket (Fire in Babylon, by Simon Lister), Clive Lloyd explains why excelling at cricket mattered: “It sounds simple, unremarkable even, but when you consider our painful history, the bitter impositions forced upon those who came before us and the particular ordeals that the inhabitants of the Caribbean have had to overcome each day of their lives, you can begin to understand why winning cricket matches for the West Indies meant so much to us all… As the great writer C.L.R. James put it, we had entered the comity of nations.”
One did not even have to play against Britain to make the anti-imperial point. Ranjitsinhji may have claimed he “tried his best to play with a straight bat for the empire”, but his cricket demolished racial stereotypes. Much later, sport, and cricket as a vital a part of it, became the most effective expression against apartheid: how could there be fair competition when South African sport bodies supported racial barriers imposed by the system?
Cricket was a special sport, and can still be, but only if it would let itself again be larger than the sum of its scorecards and broadcast revenues. Any sport that does not put us in touch with our better selves cannot be worth our while.
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