Cricketers Have to Step up in Conflict Between India and Pakistan

Now that England have arrived in India in the wake of the Mumbai atrocities, attention has focused on India’s scheduled tour to Pakistan in the new year. The sub-continent’s version of the Ashes provides a fascinating backdrop to the political relationship between the traditional foes.

The proposed tour—due to begin on January 6th—is in serious doubt. India's Sports Minister, MS Gill, has said that India should not tour Pakistan in the wake of the terror attacks in Mumbai.

“Is it possible for one team to arrive in Mumbai and indulge in mass murder, and have another team go and play cricket in the winter afternoon sun at Lahore, immediately after?” he asked.  

This position is supported by cricketing legend Sunil Gavaskar, who argued it will be “impossible” for India to tour Pakistan given the deterioration in political relations between the two countries.

Politics and sport are natural bedfellows in these two countries. Cricket provides both countries with international recognition and acclaim. The Pakistan Cricket Board’s constitution, for example, actually recognises the head of state as its patron. Similarly, in India many former Chief Ministers become members of domestic or national boards of control.

Ever since the Parsees and the princes became involved, the political advantages of patronising cricket have out-weighed the financial cost of playing. Today, those political advantages have been surpassed by economic benefits.

Enormous figures are involved in media rights and advertising. Early in 2006, the Indian global media rights package was sold for £350 million for four years, and Nike paid £25 million to sponsor the team’s kit. When Tests resumed against Pakistan in 2004, corporate advertising spending was said to have reached £40 million.

Business interests may be behind the renaissance of relations between Pakistan and India. The cost of TV commercials and round-the-ground advertising was about three times the price of when India plays other opponents.

These financial concerns are even more acute for an increasingly isolated Pakistan. Unsurprisingly, the Minister of Sport Aftab Jilani is optimistic that India will tour, believing that it will help ease tension between the two governments.

Gill responded by saying that Pakistan should first promise that it would help the world to stop terrorism. Whilst these two ministers of sport lock horns over political issues, it begs the question of what this has to do with cricket.

Yet any analysis of the India-Pakistan cricket history is embroiled in the political and military conflict between the two neighbours. Contests were suspended between 1961 and 1978, a period in which the two nations fought two wars with each other. The 1978 series was the result of negotiations between the two governments.

Cricket was again suspended in the 1990s when Pakistan was accused of sponsoring cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. Relations were resumed in 2004 due to a process initiated by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India’s prime minister, and General Musharraf, the President of Pakistan.

The respective cricket boards played no part in the decision-making.

This still leaves the question of terrorism. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence has an acknowledged history of supporting Islamic fundamentalists. These have included the Mujahideen, the Taliban, and the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba—the group India accuses of being behind the attack on Mumbai.

Whilst acknowledging that its intelligence agency helped train terrorists in the past, the Pakistan government now claims there is no role for the army in the democratic process. Though whether this is accepted by the military, who have always provided a silhouette to the political apparatus, is another matter.

Zimbabwe has been isolated because of a regime that fell out of favour and on a number of indices Pakistan compare unfavourably. Then we have the precedence of the boycott of South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s to show that sport can apply political pressure on a despised regime.

However, in South Africa there was a groundswell of internal opposition that does not exist in Pakistan.

This has to leave a role for the cricketers of the two nations, for whilst two nuclear powers are on hair-trigger alert, it is the responsibility of cricket interests to promote peace between the two nations—for if not they, who else?