IPL fiasco a rude reminder of cross-border reality
By Saad Shafqat
Friday, 22 Jan, 2010
Doors to the Indian Premier League, the most lucrative tournament in world cricket, have once again been closed for players from Pakistan. Last years exclusion was merely disappointing; this time it is patently cruel.
Last year the Pakistan government denied permission to the players citing security fears; this time all formalities were sorted out, and the players were invited by the IPL team owners themselves to be available for selection. Yet when the Pakistani names came up, they found no takers.
The official explanation from IPL chief Lalit Modi is that the team owners were wary because the availability of Pakistani players could not be assured given the moody relationship between Islamabad and Delhi.
But all visas had been duly obtained and NOCs had been granted with clearance from the highest levels of government in Pakistan. Moreover, if the concerns were of such a political nature, then the honorable thing would have been not to invite the Pakistanis in the first place.
You have to hand it to the IPL organizers. They pulled off a spiteful act against Pakistan, but have managed to artfully camouflage it with a benign narrative.
The Times of India has termed this incident a shameful episode in Indian cricket history. On the day of the IPL auction, the paper confirmed that franchise owners had actually been advised to avoid bidding for Pakistan players.
It is the equivalent of inviting guests to a party with a predetermined plan to not let them join in the fun.
Why would you do that to your guests, especially in a country like India where hospitality has long been a cherished virtue? Official statements notwithstanding, there are no benign explanations here.
What we have seen in this third edition of the IPL players auction is nothing less than a complicit expression of hatred towards Pakistan.
In attempting to soften the blow, Modi also said that Pakistanis were not the only ones who got ignored; cricketers from other countries went unsold too. This excuse would have been believable had Pakistani players been mediocre T20 players. But Pakistani players are better than anyone in this exciting form of the game.
The bare fact is that players like Shahid Afridi, Sohail Tanvir, Umar Gul, and Imran Nazir would have been a dream acquisition for any IPL team. Not only is Pakistan world champion in Twenty20 cricket, it also has by far the best win-loss ratio in T20 international matches.
It is bad enough that there was an under-the-table IPL directive to ignore the Pakistan players; what is far more depressing is that the franchises followed this advice and closed ranks so willingly.
IPL team owners are all famous and wealthy people with outsized egos. Getting them to read from the same script would be impossible unless there was already a permissive mindset that had seduced them into preferring rage over reason.
On this side of the border, we tend to underestimate Indian animosity towards Pakistan. This IPL auction fiasco is a rude reminder of cross-border reality.
Ideally, we should be able to shrug off this snub. That is probably what players and fans from countries like England, Australia and South Africa would do. But we are not English, Australian or South African.
As Pakistanis, we are condemned to live this experience through the complicated contours of the Pakistan-India relationship.
All-rounder Abdul Razzak said after this episode that India wanted to hurt our image and our feelings and it has succeeded. We have to be honest and admit this is what we all feel.
Yet a snub is ultimately only what you allow it to be. One feels bad for our star players, who have lost a golden chance to cash in on their world-class ability.
It may not seem possible today, but cricket and other relations with India will eventually improve, as ties between neighbors inevitably must. In the meantime, beyond the immediate hurt and disappointment lies another opportunity to be availed provided we manage to constructively channelize our anger.
It is high time that the PCB got its act together to launch a partly privatized franchise-model Twenty20 league within Pakistan too. The basic legwork for this may already have been done, as a feasibility to this effect was prepared under the previous PCB chiefs tenure.
It is true that our cricket market is much smaller than Indias, but Twenty20 matches based on teams from regional cricket associations have been filling Pakistani stadiums, sometimes to capacity. Pakistan is a nation of 170 million people; a potential market of millions is nothing to sneeze at.
One might well ask why all this fuss about Twenty20 cricket when this is the version of the game being blamed for spoiling our players technique and producing our national cricket debacles.
The answer is that cricket serves at the pleasure of the viewing public, which simply cannot get enough of Twenty20s frills and thrills. Twenty20 cricket is here to stay and it will be easier for everyone if we embraced it rather than fought with it.
DAWN.COM | Sport | IPL fiasco ? a rude reminder of cross-border reality
JUST REMEMBER IPL IS A BILLION DOLLAR LEAGUE AND NOT STREET CRICKET
