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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Can an old alliance work for India-Pakistan cricket?
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Can an old alliance work for India-Pakistan cricket?

When cricketing peace was brokered between India and Pakistan in 2004, the men heading the BCCI and PCB were Jagmohan Dalmiya and Shahryar Khan. Will it work again?

Pakistan and India supporters during the World Cup match between the two countries in Australia on 15 February. Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty ImagesPremium
Pakistan and India supporters during the World Cup match between the two countries in Australia on 15 February. Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

NEW DELHI :

The agonizing 6-hour wait that Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Shahryar Khan had to endure at Kolkata’s Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport on Saturday was perhaps the least discomfiting hurdle in the resumption of cricket ties between the two countries, as he would know from past experience.

Khan had flown into Kolkata from Dhaka, Bangladesh, when his visa permitted him to land only in Delhi, and it was only some hectic string-pulling that prevented him from being deported. Khan was quite sanguine about the hardship because he had a mission to pursue that could have got stymied by a row.

While in Kolkata, Khan had a one-on-on meeting with Jagmohan Dalmiya, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and then announced to the world that the two countries were likely to play their first bilateral Test series in more than seven years in December in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In the 2012-13 season, Pakistan had visited India for a three-match One Day International and two-match Twenty20 series, but they haven’t played a Test series since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Khan also mentioned this would be the first of five such series in eight years, according to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two cricket boards. This had the cricket world buzzing though the PCB chief’s enthusiasm was not quite matched by the response of the Indian cricket establishment.

Dalmiya waffled, while BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur sent out an official release saying that the PCB chief had just paid a courtesy call.

The BCCI’s tepidity, one imagines, was only because it has no clue yet how the Indian government will respond to the informal agreement between the two cricket boards, since the matter has gone around in circles for a while.

For the record, the MoU Khan referred to did not emerge from this particular tête-à-tête with Dalmiya. It was something that the BCCI and PCB had accomplished more than a year ago, but it had been sidelined by the internecine problems in the two boards.

Now, with new dispensations in power in both establishments, the opportunity to make India-Pakistan cricket work seemed a worthwhile agenda: not merely because Dalmiya and Khan are old friends who fortuitously find themselves at the helm of their boards again, but also because of other compelling reasons.

Where Pakistan is concerned, the issue is clear-cut. The PCB is in penury. More than six years after the terror attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore, an overseas side (Zimbabwe) has agreed to tour the country for a tournament, which will last just about a week. It starts from 22 May. While this is a breakthrough of sorts, the financial implications of the tour are hardly likely to help the PCB’s coffers. The off-shore series that Pakistan has been playing since 2009 have been largely in the UAE, and these have not been rewarding in terms of money. A series against India, even if played in the UAE, would be a shot in the arm.

Where the BCCI is concerned, the monetary aspect is important but not paramount. More significant is the looming threat of a parallel cricket universe to the International Cricket Council (ICC), mooted by the Essel Group. This would affect the Indian cricket establishment most, because the target is evidently the IPL, BCCI’s cash cow.

India’s dominant position in the sport’s power structure—with England and Australia playing second and third fiddle—may be accepted by other boards but it has not endeared them to all cricket-playing countries. This makes the BCCI vulnerable to a hostile external attack.

Judging from the extent of discontent simmering beneath the surface, players from countries outside of the “Big 3"—particularly Pakistan—seem relatively soft targets for seduction by the big bucks that could be on offer by a rival body. The resumption of India-Pakistan ties at this juncture, ICC and BCCI administrators believe, would take the sting out of the impending threat. It would send out a signal that they are not caving in.

While ICC chairman N. Srinivasan has been at loggerheads with the current power bloc in the BCCI, this is an existential crisis, where differences have been put aside.

Not the least, of course, is the box-office value of the cricket rivalry between the two countries. That the India-Pakistan match in the recent World Cup was sold out more than a year in advance and watched by close to a billion people highlights the unmatchable, blockbuster appeal of cricket between these two countries.

Given the peculiar geo-socio-political relations between India and Pakistan, cricket relations have been on a roller-coaster ride ever since the two countries got their independence within a day of each other, in August 1947.

In the first 15 years of independence, for instance, India and Pakistan played each other in three full series. After the 1961-62 series in India, however, political relations soured, two wars were fought, and it took 17 years for cricket ties to be resumed. In the period from 1978, these ties have moved in fits and starts: There has been greedy exploitation of the “emotions" of fans in the two countries with a host of matches and series, punctured by longish voids when political relations nosedive: There was no bilateral cricket for five years after the Kargil war and there hasn’t been a full series since 26/11.

But cricket has also been the balm and bridge for relations between the two countries. Even at the worst of times, the BCCI and PCB have remained on good terms and provided a kind of “back channel" for political diplomacy.

Interestingly, when cricketing peace was brokered in 2004, the men heading the BCCI and PCB were Dalmiya and Khan. It’s an old friendship at work again, but faced with the challenge of convincing a new government in India that cricket can be a panacea, not a problem.

So what’s the chance of BCCI succeeding in getting a green signal for the series from the government?

Despite the sabre-rattling on either side, relations between the two countries seem better than at any time in the recent past. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seem to share a decent rapport. Modi is not oblivious to the manic obsession with the sport in India. If this series can act as a lead-in to the SAARC, or South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, summit scheduled for January in Islamabad, he could score some brownie points and enhance his position as the foremost leader in the region.

But then again, given the volatile relations between the two countries over the past 65 years, it is impossible to predict how the next six-seven months will pan out.

Ayaz Memon is a senior columnist who writes on sports and other matters.

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Published: 13 May 2015, 08:13 PM IST
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