The money pitch

On its part, the BCCI was relieved. If this series went ahead, the path would be opened for the reciprocal Pakistani tour of India in 2005. Given India’s more evolved cricket market, that tour is already estimated at being worth three times this one. As such, it should earn the BCCI $ 60 million, probably more.

Should one add the 2006 Indian tour of Pakistan — the third leg of the subcontinental Ashes — the PCB would be richer by at least another $20 million. As such, the Indian government’s clearance had a potential $100 million riding on it.

Two lessons flow from here.

One — and this is, really, an old point — emotion can bypass history, sidestep geography but rarely ignore the economy. When trade between two countries reaches critical mass, it comes in the way of conflict. When the money is just so overwhelming, different pressures come into operation, making adventurism and ad hoc policy making that much more difficult.

India and Pakistan scarcely buy and sell from each other — but cricket is about the most lucrative commodity traded between the two. True, the fear of diplomatic damage eventually got the government to give its green signal. Concern for the well-being of the BCCI was a relatively minor factor. Nevertheless, the government could not have been oblivious to the opportunity cost and opportunities lost.

This brings us to lesson two. The BCCI was keen to play not because it was particularly in love with Pakistan but because it was completely straitjacketed by the International Cricket Council (ICC) calendar.

To non-cricket buffs, this may sound convoluted. A bit of background is called for.

Till some years ago, the ICC played no real role in running cricket, scheduling matches and so on. If two countries, say India and Australia, wanted to play each other in a given month of a given year, the individual boards met and reached an agreement. The rest of the planet could go to hell.

This led to “big” countries like Australia simply playing whoever they liked, rarely deigning to take on lowly Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe and being niggardly with offering even India a tour Down Under.

In 2001, the 10-year calendar changed all that. The ICC forced all test-playing countries to play each other regularly. No more picking and choosing.

So today you know precisely which team is playing a test with which one in June 2004 or December 2007 or anywhere between 2002-11. If a country refuses to go by the timetable, it better have a damned good reason.

It was this iron framework that trapped the BCCI. Forget the tour of Pakistan, it was the idea of losing $60 million in 2005 — when a slighted Pakistan would inevitably refuse to come here — that had it sweating.

In the pre-ICC calendar days, the BCCI wouldn’t have worried. It would have shrugged off the PCB, invited South Africa or the West Indies or any “valuable” team to tour India in early 2005 and made good the loss. No Pakistan? No problem, get someone else.

Thanks to the calendar this is just not possible. Every other team is committed to cricket almost round the year. There are few dates free. The system has taken over. The room for bilateral manoeuvre has gone.

In a sense, a global rulebook is forcing bilateral engagement. As an analogy, consider the World Trade Organisation (WTO). As per WTO rules, countries are obliged to bring down tariffs

to pre-decided levels by fixed deadlines.

It is impossible for a WTO member to apply one set of duties for imports from, say, the United States but far higher duties for imports from, say, Norway. There are no avenues for whimsy or prejudice.

Of course, India and Pakistan scarcely trade enough for WTO to be able to adjudicate between them (and a happy dispute that would be the day it happens). Yet the cricket business — and that word is used advisedly — is an aspirational model.

The limits to bilateralism are evident in just so many fields. What was the upshot of Operation Parakram in 2002? In effect, India conceded a war with Pakistan was only feasible if the West acceded to it.

Indian troops may still march into Peshawar some day, but they are more likely to do so if Uncle Sam wakes up one morning, decides enough is enough, formally extends the war on terror to Pakistan and takes its nation-building experiment to a third laboratory.

Likewise the clamps that are going to be imposed on Pakistan’s nuclear programme now that its proliferation record is there for all to see, too, will amount to an international regime of controls doing India’s work for it.

Both India and Pakistan will increasingly have to conform to a multilateral code of laws, written or unwritten, in security or the economy or otherwise. The tentativeness on the cricket tour notwithstanding, India will be instinctively comfortable with this. It is Pakistan that is more often the rogue when it comes to contractual obligations — and the West will now have to guarantee compliance.

In short, the key to a working relationship with Pakistan lies shut in a world system — not in systematically shutting out the world.