POLITICS: India-Pakistan Row over Cricket May Sour Peace Talks

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Feb 14 2004 (IPS) - From nuclear weaponry to the possession of Kashmir, India and Pakistan have plenty to squabble over. But right now a row is building up between the neighbours over India’s reluctance to honour a commitment to send its cricket team over for a tour in March.

India has cited security concerns as the reason for its reluctance. But the real, though unstated, reason could be the fact that the right-wing, ultra-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government expects to fight a general election in April and is anxious to avoid anything that might make it look bad.

”We cannot risk the safety of our players who will be expected to play on open grounds,” Deputy Home Minister Swami Chinmayanand told journalists who called on him on Friday to ask if the six-week tour would materialise.

Chinmayanand also said that the government was anxious not to jeopardise a peace process between the neighbours that began in January after years of bitterness which brought them to the brink of an all-out war in 2002.

”Should there be any untoward incident, all the efforts made towards the peace process will end up in water,” Chinmayanand said .

Top diplomats of the two countries are expected to begin formal talks in Islamabad on Monday to follow up on declared intentions to build peaceful relations made on the sidelines of a South Asian summit in January by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

The issue of whether or not India’s cricket eleven will tour Pakistan in March is considered so sensitive that a final decision has been left to Vajpayee himself. Reports from Islamabad suggest that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) may seek Musharraf’s intervention.

The PCB could lose anywhere up to 25 million U. S. dollars in sponsorships and advertisement and television coverage rights, including four million dollars to the Korean electronics giant Samsung that holds the title-sponsorship rights.

Ravinder Zutshi, Samsung’s director for sales in India, confirmed that his company has signed the title-sponsorship contract for the Indo-Pakistan series. ”It will be a sad moment if the series does not come through but we will go by the decision of the government,” he said.

Officials in the home ministry said earlier in the week that the government favours a postponement of the tour to May, by when the general elections are expected to be out of the way.

To add to the conundrum, Saurav Ganguly, the captain of the Indian side and Sachin Tendulkar, reckoned as one of the world’s best-ever batsmen, have both indicated that they had apprehensions regarding the tour.

On Friday, PCB chairman Sharyar Khan told Indian news channels from Islamabad that if the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) does call off the tour or postpones it, the matter would be taken up with the International Cricket Council (ICC) – which could then award stiff penalties.

Indications are that if the tour does come through, the Indian team may not include some of the country’s top players. Likewise, the BCCI may insist on not having to play in some of Pakistan’s ‘tough towns’ like Karachi and Peshawar, but limit the series to the capital Islamabad and Lahore, which are considered safer.

India restored sporting ties with Pakistan only three months ago as a sign of improving ties between two nations, which suspended overflights and downgraded diplomatic missions in each other’s countries following an armed attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001. New Delhi blamed Pakistan-related groups for that attack.

The accompanying severance in sporting ties by India wrecked commercial prospects at neutral venues where matches were scheduled, such as Singapore, Sharjah and Toronto.

Cricket and other sporting matches between the sub-continental rivals invariably prove to be major crowd-pullers because of the extra sizzle. But they are even more ferocious when played on each other’s territory.

Last year too, a South African team refused to play in Peshawar, which is close to the Afghanistan frontier, while the New Zealanders called off a tour after a bomb went off in front of their hotel in Karachi in May.

Similarly, Australia and the West Indies refused to tour Pakistan in 2002, agreeing to play the Pakistan side only at neutral venues such as Sri Lanka and Sharjah.

In January, Musharraf narrowly escaped two assassination attempts by local groups said to be enraged by his proximity to Washington and by his peace overtures to India.

Musharraf has publicly promised to put an end to Islamabad’s policy of allowing armed militants from crossing over the Line of Control (LoC) into the Indian side of divided Kashmir as a means of hastening a settlement to the 50-year-old dispute over the territory.

Vajpayee considers the peace breakthrough with Pakistan as major achievement during his six years in office and it figures high in the BJP’s election campaign.

Pakistan was created in 1947 as a homeland for the sub-continent’s Muslims by departing British colonials who, often accused of exacerbating religious strife through a divide-and-rule policy, also left behind a cricket legacy