India’s cricket tour of Pakistan means many things to many people. It means India will play Pakistan in Pakistan after nearly a decade and a half. That’s a record of sorts. It means that India is in with its best ever chance to win a One-Day and/or Test series against Pakistan in Pakistan since this is arguably its best team ever. If that happens, that will be a record too. But if it doesn’t, it will still be a record for Pakistan to retain its unbeatable scorecard against India in Pakistan. Then there are bound to be record crowds, record ticket sales, record media relays and record PCB revenues. A record number of Indians, including journalists, will cross the border by foot, rail and air. At the end of the day, many more records are bound to be broken on the ground, there is such an abundance of talent in the Indian teamsters and so much grit in the Pakistani youngsters.
But this tour is not just about cricket and sport. It is a metaphor for high politics as only the establishments of Pakistan and India can contrive despite themselves. It follows in the wake of nuclear rattling by both not so long ago. It reflects the tactical and strategic compulsions of the hardest of hardliners on both sides. It opens the floodgates to unprecedented people-to-people contacts and bonhomie. And it posits the greatest threat to the Indo-Pak peace process launched only a short while ago.
Everyone in Pakistan wanted this series to go ahead. We are crazy about cricket in general but we are insane about Indo-Pak cricket. However, the Pakistani establishment desperately wants to exploit the occasion to relay a critical message across the world’s television screens: come one, come all, this is a safe and sporting country. Pakistan’s image has taken a nasty battering in recent years. We are trying to beat the image back into shape. So we have marshaled the best security in the world – fit for a president on the hit list of Al-Qaeda, no less – to make sure that nothing goes wrong.
On the Indian side, too, the passion among the people is much the same: let’s play – the game. But serious doubts have been expressed by well-meaning persons about two risky aspects of a tour on the eve of the Indian elections. What if India should lose to Pakistan and the defeat have an adverse impact on the BJP’s electoral prospects? What if an act of terrorism should lead to a loss of Indian lives and/or a midway cancellation of the tour, derailing the peace dialogue so painstakingly cobbled by both sides recently? In the event, however, India’s prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has crossed the Rubicon. Has he risked his all or nothing on a cricket series with the old enemy?
It would be a mistake to imagine that all will go well as hoped or planned. Indeed, going by the past, the chances are that the odd bomb or two will go off somewhere or the other – just as one did in Rawalpindi only three days before the match. The chances are the crowds will riot in some stadium stand or the other. The chances are the police will lay into the crowds somewhere or the other. The chances are that cricketing tempers will fly over some umpiring decision or the other. The chances are that some match will be called off for a short or long time while the situation is brought under control. The chances are that conspiracy theories about match-fixing and team selection will still do the rounds. In other words, the chances are that if anything can conceivably go wrong it might actually go wrong. Does this then mean that the cricket tour should never have been organised at this time and that Mr Vajpayee’s decision is bound to rebound on him?
No. Mr Vajpayee seems to have realised two major Indian truths. One: if the BJP is to consolidate its position as the other mainstream national party, it must dilute its overt Hindu stance and woo a slice of the Muslims of India into its fold. There is, after all, one nation in India, not two. Therefore the peace dividend with Muslim Pakistan is as critical to his national reckoning in the future – the feel good factor – as the fearful communal war-mongering was in the past.
Two: if terrorism in Kashmir can be factored into the Indo-Pak confidence building process as a potentially destabilising factor to contend with, there is no reason why terrorism in Pakistan cannot be factored into the same equation without derailing the process. In other words, despite the small print in the contract brandished by the PCB and BCCI about calling off the tour under certain conditions, there is a lot at stake for both countries in concluding this series without being swayed by certain provocations.
Wonderful. May the best team win. More than just cricket depends on this old cliché.