Let146;s play cricket

Cricket in the time of terrorism makes for a strange spectacle. A team of sport administrators is wending its way through Pakistan8217;s Test venues. Upon its return, this recce group sent by the Board of Control for Cricket in India is to file an assessment on the security situation in centres like Peshawar, Lahore, Multan and Karachi. On its report rests the fate of India8217;s proposed six-week tour of Pakistan. It is bound to strike all enthusiasts of the game as more than just a little absurd that men normally charged with negotiating tour schedules and team outings are now grappling with rosters of terrorist organisations and violence indices of different cities. It is absurd, but it8217;s par for the course. In recent months as teams like South Africa and New Zealand have kept their rendezvous in Pakistan, it is a drill that8217;s been deemed a necessary prelude to cricketing contests. Security of players and the cricketing bandwagon is crucial, and it is right that serious attention is being paid to this aspect. After all, given the India-Pakistan matrix, a botched tour is worse than no tour.

But while the security screening is unexceptionable, it is important that sport and politics be kept apart. If this tour is scheduled in the early days of a bold new bid at normalising Indo-Pak relations, it must be remembered that the players are not diplomats in flannels 8212; that contests are the result of a bilateral thaw, not critical episodes in an unfolding peace process. The tour is also located in the midst of what now appears to be a no-holds-barred election campaign. To the extent that the national sport will snatch headline space from electoral news, the two spheres are bound to meet. But they must not mix. In the best of times political parties like the Shiv Sena routinely mine the cricket for shrill rhetoric. A test of political maturity will thus entail speedy and unequivocal condemnation of any such attempt. A suitable declaration of intent in this regard would be a dispassionate and transparent decision by the government on the viability of the Test series.

In days to come we are bound to hear much about playing the game in the right spirit. But great rivalries, rivalries that elicit the best from cricketers, are constructed on keen contests, on a certain aggression, on a determination not to give even an inch. These rivalries, however, cannot be sustained by nurturing that aggression beyond the boundary. They are not preserved by imputing motives and loyalties to the contestants out in the middle. They are kept alive by generously applauding the victor, no matter which side it may be.