Thought provoking piece from TTel on today's cricket encounter. Isn't it sad that we are constantly reminded that we should expect trouble at some point? Why can't people win with grace or lose with dignity? That counts for both fans and players.
In England we have long regarded our Ashes encounters with Australia as embodying the biggest cricketing rivalry in the world. We deceive ourselves. India versus Pakistan is now the most meaningful and tremendous sporting contest – not just in cricket but in all world sport.
Compared to the pulsating, passionate, primordial struggle that will today convulse all of India and Pakistan, the Ashes, it has to be admitted, counts for relatively little.
When Ricky Ponting and his green-capped losers were blown away by Andrew Strauss and his men three months ago, the worst they suffered was wounded pride and a mauling in the Australian press.
If history is anything to go by, today’s losers will face professional disgrace and social ostracism. They will not be able to return to their homes for fear of physical attack. Some may receive obscene phone calls in the night, as Pakistani skipper Wasim Akram did after his country’s quarter-final defeat to India in 1996. His home was stoned, his effigy burnt in the street, and he required a police escort to go outside.
The winners, by contrast, will bask in national adulation. Indeed, a flavour of the kind of rewards that lie ahead came yesterday with the announcement from Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of the Punjab, that each member of the Pakistani national side will receive some 25 acres of fertile land as a prize for beating India.
It is impossible to exaggerate how much is at stake for the teams as close to one billion people view the epic World Cup semi-final between these two sub-continental teams in the Mohali stadium in Chandigarh.
Whoever wins, millions of supporters will take to the streets in ecstasy and triumph. But for some, defeat will be too much. The mood is bound to turn sour with disappointment.
After Pakistan tamely folded to India in 1996, one supporter took down his Kalashnikov from a shelf, blew out his television and then, in despair, turned his gun upon himself. Another had a heart attack. Meanwhile, the aircraft bringing the national team back to Lahore had to divert to Karachi at the last moment to shield the players from the fury of the mob that had assembled at the airport to greet them. We should probably brace ourselves for the same kind of reaction tonight from the losers.
Behind all this passion lurks a long, tragic and far too often brutal history. Scholars estimate that between one and three million people died in massacres when Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India were split at the time of independence from the British Empire in 1947.
Since then, there have been four bloody wars between these two proud and magnificent countries, as well as a number of smaller conflicts. To make this hostility yet more menacing, both countries are now armed with nuclear weapons, each aimed at the other. And Indian and Pakistani soldiers face one another uneasily across the lonely line of control in mountainous Kashmir, just a few hundred miles from where today’s massive sporting contest takes place.
The German military philosopher Clausewitz famously noted that war is a continuation of politics by other means. The Indians and Pakistanis have taken the dictum one stage further: for them, cricket is another form of war.
The great Pakistan batsman Javed Miandad, notorious for his short fuse on and off the pitch, made no bones about this: “To me, cricket is war. Just like a soldier defending the borders of his country.”
Indeed “war stopped play” has too often been the description of the state of cricketing diplomacy between India and Pakistan. Ice cold relations put paid to Test cricket between the sides from 1960 to 1978. And when Pakistan defeated India on the resumption, President Zia was so overcome with joy that he ordered a bank holiday. In an echo of that move, the Pakistan government has granted half a day’s holiday today.
This match marks the end of another very frosty period. It will be the first between the countries on Indian soil since the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, which were organised from Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan remains convinced that the Indians are backing the long-running insurgency in Baluchistan, and cannot forgive what it regards as the occupation of Muslim-majority Kashmir.
So today’s match will be the most closely guarded, and heavily fortified, in the history of world sport.
Paramilitary security will surround the stadium, while the Indian government has already imposed a no-fly zone every bit as ferocious as the United Nations interdict on Libyan airspace. Fighter jets and helicopters of the Indian Air Force are on permanent standby at nearby Ambala for any breach, while approaching 10,000 police are either on patrol in the streets or stationed nearby. Anti-aircraft guns are also lined up in case of attack.
Hardline Hindu groups, such as Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena party, have proclaimed their unequivocal opposition to the presence of the Pakistan cricket team on Indian soil, and it is no wonder that some blame the sporting rivalry for inspiring unhealthy communal hatred.
But these criticisms are misplaced. Again and again these highly charged encounters have turned into an unequivocal force for good. The truth is that Pakistan and India have a great deal more in common than they care to admit to themselves. They share many of the same languages, the same customs, the same history, the same clothes and one magnificent shared passion – the game of cricket.
So there is a surprising amount of good humour between rival fans when the sides meet. The players tend to get on very well, too. During one period of conflict the legendary Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar was asked his view, and reportedly replied: “How do you spell conscientious objector?”
Pakistan ended a long period of bitter tension by inviting India on a highly successful tour six years ago. Afterwards, the Indian High Commissioner told the Pakistan cricket manager and diplomat Shararyar Khan: “20,000 Indian fans visited Pakistan for the cricket series. You have sent back 20,000 Pakistani ambassadors to India.”
This triumph echoed India’s first tour of Pakistan back in 1955, just eight years after the agonies of partition. Pakistan threw open its doors, with some 10,000 Indian citizens crossing the border across which so many had fled amid terrible scenes of carnage. The atmosphere could not have been warmer as the Muslims of Lahore took the Indian visitors to their hearts, with many restaurants and hotels giving them free drinks and meals.
So today, it is no surprise that the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his Pakistan counterpart, Yusuf Gilani, both Punjabis, will be together at Mohali, taking advantage of the occasion for a little “cricket diplomacy” in an attempt to ease the relations which have been so fraught in recent months.
The two prime ministers will witness a gladiatorial encounter. But it is one that demonstrates how much their two great warring countries have in common.
In England we have long regarded our Ashes encounters with Australia as embodying the biggest cricketing rivalry in the world. We deceive ourselves. India versus Pakistan is now the most meaningful and tremendous sporting contest – not just in cricket but in all world sport.
Compared to the pulsating, passionate, primordial struggle that will today convulse all of India and Pakistan, the Ashes, it has to be admitted, counts for relatively little.
When Ricky Ponting and his green-capped losers were blown away by Andrew Strauss and his men three months ago, the worst they suffered was wounded pride and a mauling in the Australian press.
If history is anything to go by, today’s losers will face professional disgrace and social ostracism. They will not be able to return to their homes for fear of physical attack. Some may receive obscene phone calls in the night, as Pakistani skipper Wasim Akram did after his country’s quarter-final defeat to India in 1996. His home was stoned, his effigy burnt in the street, and he required a police escort to go outside.
The winners, by contrast, will bask in national adulation. Indeed, a flavour of the kind of rewards that lie ahead came yesterday with the announcement from Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of the Punjab, that each member of the Pakistani national side will receive some 25 acres of fertile land as a prize for beating India.
It is impossible to exaggerate how much is at stake for the teams as close to one billion people view the epic World Cup semi-final between these two sub-continental teams in the Mohali stadium in Chandigarh.
Whoever wins, millions of supporters will take to the streets in ecstasy and triumph. But for some, defeat will be too much. The mood is bound to turn sour with disappointment.
After Pakistan tamely folded to India in 1996, one supporter took down his Kalashnikov from a shelf, blew out his television and then, in despair, turned his gun upon himself. Another had a heart attack. Meanwhile, the aircraft bringing the national team back to Lahore had to divert to Karachi at the last moment to shield the players from the fury of the mob that had assembled at the airport to greet them. We should probably brace ourselves for the same kind of reaction tonight from the losers.
Behind all this passion lurks a long, tragic and far too often brutal history. Scholars estimate that between one and three million people died in massacres when Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India were split at the time of independence from the British Empire in 1947.
Since then, there have been four bloody wars between these two proud and magnificent countries, as well as a number of smaller conflicts. To make this hostility yet more menacing, both countries are now armed with nuclear weapons, each aimed at the other. And Indian and Pakistani soldiers face one another uneasily across the lonely line of control in mountainous Kashmir, just a few hundred miles from where today’s massive sporting contest takes place.
The German military philosopher Clausewitz famously noted that war is a continuation of politics by other means. The Indians and Pakistanis have taken the dictum one stage further: for them, cricket is another form of war.
The great Pakistan batsman Javed Miandad, notorious for his short fuse on and off the pitch, made no bones about this: “To me, cricket is war. Just like a soldier defending the borders of his country.”
Indeed “war stopped play” has too often been the description of the state of cricketing diplomacy between India and Pakistan. Ice cold relations put paid to Test cricket between the sides from 1960 to 1978. And when Pakistan defeated India on the resumption, President Zia was so overcome with joy that he ordered a bank holiday. In an echo of that move, the Pakistan government has granted half a day’s holiday today.
This match marks the end of another very frosty period. It will be the first between the countries on Indian soil since the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, which were organised from Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan remains convinced that the Indians are backing the long-running insurgency in Baluchistan, and cannot forgive what it regards as the occupation of Muslim-majority Kashmir.
So today’s match will be the most closely guarded, and heavily fortified, in the history of world sport.
Paramilitary security will surround the stadium, while the Indian government has already imposed a no-fly zone every bit as ferocious as the United Nations interdict on Libyan airspace. Fighter jets and helicopters of the Indian Air Force are on permanent standby at nearby Ambala for any breach, while approaching 10,000 police are either on patrol in the streets or stationed nearby. Anti-aircraft guns are also lined up in case of attack.
Hardline Hindu groups, such as Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena party, have proclaimed their unequivocal opposition to the presence of the Pakistan cricket team on Indian soil, and it is no wonder that some blame the sporting rivalry for inspiring unhealthy communal hatred.
But these criticisms are misplaced. Again and again these highly charged encounters have turned into an unequivocal force for good. The truth is that Pakistan and India have a great deal more in common than they care to admit to themselves. They share many of the same languages, the same customs, the same history, the same clothes and one magnificent shared passion – the game of cricket.
So there is a surprising amount of good humour between rival fans when the sides meet. The players tend to get on very well, too. During one period of conflict the legendary Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar was asked his view, and reportedly replied: “How do you spell conscientious objector?”
Pakistan ended a long period of bitter tension by inviting India on a highly successful tour six years ago. Afterwards, the Indian High Commissioner told the Pakistan cricket manager and diplomat Shararyar Khan: “20,000 Indian fans visited Pakistan for the cricket series. You have sent back 20,000 Pakistani ambassadors to India.”
This triumph echoed India’s first tour of Pakistan back in 1955, just eight years after the agonies of partition. Pakistan threw open its doors, with some 10,000 Indian citizens crossing the border across which so many had fled amid terrible scenes of carnage. The atmosphere could not have been warmer as the Muslims of Lahore took the Indian visitors to their hearts, with many restaurants and hotels giving them free drinks and meals.
So today, it is no surprise that the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his Pakistan counterpart, Yusuf Gilani, both Punjabis, will be together at Mohali, taking advantage of the occasion for a little “cricket diplomacy” in an attempt to ease the relations which have been so fraught in recent months.
The two prime ministers will witness a gladiatorial encounter. But it is one that demonstrates how much their two great warring countries have in common.
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