When lines are crossed

Imran Khan says that sportspersons, and especially cricketers, will never be the target of extremists in Pakistan but I reckon even his reassurance may not be good enough for home ministry officials and security experts when they meet in a fortnight to clear the Indian team for the tour coming up in January.

On the face of it, there is no credible reason to anticipate any problem. Diplomatic relations today between the two countries are cordial, if not warm, and this has always had an impact on the public. In the past, as we know, cricket relations between the two countries have been symptomatic of the existing political dynamics.

When the two countries played each other in the 1950s, the burden of Partition was so overbearing that neither side wanted to lose at any cost. Such was the pressure on the players that in 1955, manager Lala Amarnath and Pakistan captain Abdul Hafeez Kardar — who had known each other for more than a decade — came to blows in a Karachi hotel because the Indians suspected Kardar of influencing the umpires. In 1961, high-scoring opening batsman Hanif Mohammed’s hand was slashed by a blade-wielding vagabond in Bombay.

There were also two long periods — between 1962 and 1978 and again between 1989 and 2004 — when reciprocal tours between the two countries were suspended
because political relations had soured. But in 1987, when the armies of the two countries were locked in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation — it was President Zia-ul-Haq’s ‘Cricket for Peace’ gambit which prevented an escalation into open hostilities.

Over half a century, cricket relations between the two countries have waxed and waned — from extreme hostility to unexpected and astonishing bonhomie. Much of that (often misplaced) passion has been sublimated over the past decade and an India-Pakistan match (for various reasons) is not something which can bring the cricket world to a standstill any more. More likely, that would be an India-Australia contest, which of course, is a different story altogether.

So why should we be overly wary this time? Imran will recall that in 1989 when he was captain, a group of students had invaded Karachi’s National Stadium and tried to attack Krishnamachari Srikkanth, causing the One-day match to be abandoned. After hectic debate, the tour was continued, albeit only to play an unofficial One-dayer at Sialkot where a 16-year-old Sachin Tendulkar made his initial impact in international cricket by hitting Abdul Qadir for three sixes in an over.

Tendulkar, if only symbolically, is now at the centre of the debate too. Imran’s counter will be that on the last two tours the Indian team was received with extraordinary hospitality. In that sense he is right, for the Pakistan public really has nothing against Indian players. It’s just that in the last decade, the political situation in his country has become diabolical and unpredictable. Couple this with the various security-related problems that seem to have erupted in India as we heads for general elections next year and it is only prudent to be wary of sundry issues getting mish-mashed, and leading to a completely unexpected but highly avoidable crisis. That would just not be cricket, if you get what I mean.

Over the last dozen odd-years I have known Subhash Ghai, I have found him to be a positivist, which is a relief in an industry where paranoia and neuroses rule, or bluff and bluster are the only substitutes to these. He is most likely to find a glass half full rather than half empty, and his never-say-die approach to life, to put it in a cricketing context, is much like Saurav Ganguly’s over the past couple of years.

Ghai is also obsessed by the medium to the extent that, as Naseeruddin Shah told me once, that for all his other shortcomings, at least he put his money where his mouth is when he started starting his film training academy. Reviewing films is not my primary calling, and the ways of the box office are baffling to the uninitiated, so I don’t know whether Yuvvraaj is a hit or not. But I suspect the mixed reviews that he has received so far for his new flick Yuvvraaj will only succour Ghai’s resolve for new challenges.

He is always restless to prove a point — more to himself than others.

Email: ayaz@dnaindia.net