Putting conflict before cricket

THE CENTRE'S REFUSAL to allow the Indian cricket team to play the Asian Test Championship in Pakistan seems driven by excessive paranoia and reflexive bellicosity towards Pakistan. By way of explanation, the Sports Minister, Ms. Uma Bharti, has tried to make out that the principal reason for the thumbs down was concern over the security of the team. By suggesting that player security was at the root of the refusal, Ms. Bharti is implying that the decision was made on wholly unprejudiced or non- political grounds. Why is the Sports Minister's explanation a strain on credulity? The answer is not far to seek. To begin with, this is the first time that the ``security'' issue has cropped up in the connection with the Asian Test Championship, which has been dogged in controversy and a subject of a dispute between the Sports Ministry and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). It was only a couple of months ago that Ms. Bharti ticked off the BCCI for announcing it would participate in the Championship without seeking special permission from the Government. The BCCI had thought, and quite reasonably, that this was unnecessary since the Government's own guidelines - which are questionable in themselves - prohibited only bilateral matches with Pakistan. Moreover, since the Government had expressly permitted India to play Pakistan in multi-nation tournaments, the country's participation in the Asian Test Championship - which was to be played among the four Asian Test playing countries - clearly fell outside even the Centre's restrictive guidelines.

Having adopted an irrational line against the BCCI, the Government had only two choices. Revise the guidelines it had laid down (by tightening them even further) or furnish a lame excuse for refusing the Indian team the permission to participate. As Ms. Uma Bharti's unconvincing explanation suggests, it chose the latter route. The refusal reflects a mindset which treats cricket not so much as a game but a political playground in which wholly extraneous issues are unwarrantedly given undue heed. The very fact the final refusal came after a meeting of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the External Affairs Minister was held to discuss this issue is reflective of the obsessive and misplaced political interest that the BJP-led Government accords to the question of India playing cricket with Pakistan.

Rushing to defend the refusal, Ms. Bharti has claimed that the country's ``foreign policy is bigger than sports''. That may be so, but what the Sports Minister and other members of the BJP Government fail to recognise is that sport, in the present context, could actually be a not-so-unimportant instrument to further the country's foreign policy interests. At a time when India is talking about confidence building measures in order to improve bilateral ties with Islamabad, it is ludicrous that playing cricket with Pakistan - one way of establishing greater people-to-people contact - should send the persons who rule the Centre into such a tizzy. It is also inexplicable why, when the two countries maintain a range of other sporting contacts, the issue of playing cricket with Pakistan (which the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, likened unjustifiably to a ``gladiatorial'' contest) should arouse unreasonable political passion. This is the third time in less than a year that the Government has forced the Indian cricket team to pull out from playing against Pakistan. Can people who become uneasy and flustered at the thought of the two countries playing cricket ever be trusted to improve relations between them?

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