Shadows Across the Playing Field

by Shashi Tharoor

  In the event, the anticipation was to be belied. With separate national consciousness setting in, the stakes were correspondingly higher, and neither side felt they could afford to lose. Pakistan’s first ever home Test match was allocated to the East Pakistani capital, Dacca, hardly a hotbed of cricketing excellence; but especially with the prevailing tensions in that part of the country, the Pakistanis would have considered defeat a national humiliation. In a fourday match at the start of the New Year, the two teams managed to produce only 710 runs off 387.3 overs, at a somnolent scoring rate of 1.83 runs an over. Indeed, the last over of the Test was a maiden – and it was bowled by the Pakistani wicketkeeper, Imtiaz Ahmed, while still wearing his pads! Mankad, newly appointed India’s captain to face his old friend Kardar, underbowled himself, asking Ghulam Ahmed to toil away in the first innings to the tune of 45 overs (and S.P. Gupte to bowl another 46) while turning his own arm over for figures of 12.2-3-24-1. He worked harder in the second Test at Bahawalpur in the West, normally a batsman’s paradise; but though Hanif scored a century at last, the first of what would be an illustrious career, the scoring rate still remained below 2, with just 24 wickets falling in the match. (The tireless Fazal Mahmood had the astonishing first-innings analysis, for a paceman, of 52.5-23-86-4.)

  The depressing story continued for the rest of the series. The third Test, at Lahore, was also a pedestrian affair, even if it involved the rare occurrence of a batsman (Maqsood Ahmed) being stumped on 99, but at least the players progressed far enough to get to the fourth innings of the match this time. Kardar’s failure to declare his second innings closed in order to force a result invited loud shouts of opprobrium from the crowd, but the Pakistani captain remained unfazed. The fourth Test, at Peshawar, might have produced a result had there been a fifth day of play, since India needed only 126 to win in the final innings, but they ran out of time at 23 for 1 in 19 overs! Today a target run-rate of 6.7 an over to win a Test match seems laughably gettable, but so great was India’s risk-aversion that it made no attempt whatsoever to go for the runs in the hour available. Indeed, the overall run-rate in the Test actually declined to 1.61 an over (the two teams together scored just 638 runs from 395.3 overs), and the Pakistani batsmen established a dubious record by scoring just 129 for 6 off 100 overs on the opening day of the Test. (The Indian leg-spinner, S.P. Gupte, took 5 for 63 in 41 overs.) The fifth Test, in Karachi, was also a forgettable draw, though this time the weather intervened, a thunderstorm depriving the third day of all but two hours’ play. The peculiar decision to conduct four-day Test matches also contributed to the succession of draws. Pakistan offered to play the final Test to a finish, but Mankad declined the offer. One shudders to think what the scoring rate between these two teams would have been had they played a ‘timeless’ Test.

  If the cricket was dreary, relations off the field were more than amicable. The Pakistani crowds were welcoming and largely sporting, and Radio Pakistan invited an Indian commentator, the legendary A.F.S. Talyarkhan, to join their commentary team for the second Test. Kardar, in addition to being Pakistan’s captain and an official selector, authored a Sunday column in the newspaper Dawn, which he used to promote goodwill for the tourists and the tour. While the tour was going on, the governor-general of Pakistan made an official visit to India as the country’s honoured guest for its annual Republic Day celebrations and parade, and spoke on his return of being treated with hospitality and consideration in India. Gate receipts from the Karachi Test amounted to a colossal Rs 450,000, a record for those days.

  Most remarkably, some 10,000 Indian citizens were allowed to visit Lahore for the third Test. To do this, they had to cross a border that many had fled just eight years previously, when Partition had not just witnessed streams of suffering refugees, but many cases of trains crossing the frontier with every man, woman and children in them having been slaughtered en masse on the way. With this recent history behind them, the fact that so many Indians were able to traverse a frontier so replete with painful memories, to walk the streets of a city that had once been a byword for multi-ethnic cosmopolitanism but had now been reduced to an all-Muslim stronghold, and in many cases to meet and embrace old friends by whom they had so recently felt betrayed and even threatened – all this was unutterably poignant. Lala Amarnath, no longer in the team but accompanying the tourists, spoke warmly of Lahore as his ‘home town’. The city took on a carnival atmosphere for the duration of the Test match; all other activity ground to a halt as cricket dominated every conversation. Indians (particularly those visibly non-Muslim, like the turbaned Sikhs) were warmly welcomed by Lahoris; many were offered free rides and discounted snacks, drinks and purchases. In the generally celebratory mood, no one realized it, but it would be nearly five decades before this would happen again.

  The atmosphere of comradeship that prevailed off the ground was seen by many at the time as compensation enough for the poor quality of the cricket – negativism on the field being matched, as it were, by the positive sentiments off it. The former Indian captain turned cricket administrator and all-purpose grandee, the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram, was sufficiently carried away by the spirit of bonhomie to propose that the two countries now play each other every alternate year for an equivalent of the Ashes – not quite ashes but dust, since he proposed that the trophy at stake be an urn containing the soil of both countries. No one on either side of the border took the proposal very seriously, and neither board rushed to fix a return engagement. Even as the cricket was winding down, the Kashmir dispute was cranking up again, and many Pakistanis doubted that normal relations with India could be maintained while the ‘unfinished business of Partition’ remained unsettled. It took five years for the two countries to meet again on the cricket field.

  Stalemate

  These were years of increasing tension between the two countries. Kashmir remained an issue of great sensitivity; Pakistan, emboldened by its alliances with the United States (it had become a member of both CENTO, the Central Treaty Organization, and SEATO, the South-East Asian Treaty Organization, the Asian counterparts of NATO), persisted in clamouring for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute in its favour, and India, a founder of non-alignment, fought equally hard to prevent this. The period featured, most memorably in this connection, a record-setting marathon 7 hour and 58 minute speech by Indian delegate Krishna Menon on Kashmir in the Security Council, during the course of which he fainted, had to be revived and carried dramatically on. It also saw the re-election, in the world’s largest exercise in democratic franchise, the 1957 general elections, of Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister of India. By contrast, Pakistan had suffered the convulsions of a military coup, and its new president was the rather grandly titled Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub Khan, who managed simultaneously to serve as the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan.

  The contrast was striking, and significant. Ayub’s dual roles highlighted for the first time two vital features that would come to be fundamentally important to an appreciation of Pakistan cricket – the increasing militarization of Pakistani society, including its sport; and the growing identification of Pakistani cricket with Pakistani nationalism.

  The former became inescapable over the years. The central fact of Pakistani politics since the Ayub coup has been the power of the military, which has now ruled the country for 32 of its 61 years of existence. In India, the state has an Army; in Pakistan, the Army has a state. The military can be found not only in all the key offices of government, but running real estate and import-export ventures, petrol pumps and factories; retired generals head many of the country’s universities and think-tanks. The proportion of national resources devoted to the military is perhaps the highest in the world. Every once in a while a great surge of disillusionment with the generals pours out into the streets and a ‘democratic’ leader is voted into office, but the civilian experiment always ends badly, and the military returns to power, to general relief. The British political scientist W.H. Morris-Jone
s once famously observed that the only political institutions in Pakistan are the coup and the mob.

  The instrumentalization of cricket in the service of a militarized nationalism became a corollary of this phenomenon, starting with the 1960-61 series. The Indian historian Ramachandra Guha, in his thoroughly researched A Corner of a Foreign Field, took pains to contrast the commemorative souvenirs issued by the two boards of control for this series. The Pakistani souvenir emblazoned its national symbol larger than the Indian and bristled with such tokens of the state as the national anthem and full-page photographs of the ‘Father of the Nation’, Jinnah, and President Ayub himself, whereas the Indian souvenir printed both symbols the same size, and included none of the nationalist elements of its counterpart. Indeed, Guha points out, while the Pakistani brochure was replete with images and language touting the new nation, the Indian one had an advertisement for the British airline BOAC on its cover.2 If the two countries had once been one, the 1960-61 series marked the definitive parting of the ways, both on and off the field.

  Both countries had had something by way of notable cricketing accomplishment to celebrate in the interim, Pakistan more so than India. Each had beaten a New Zealand side 2-0 at home in 1955- 56, with the Indian opening pair of Mankad and Roy setting a new world record for the highest opening partnership in Test cricket, 413 in Madras, a record which was to hold for 52 years. Pakistan had done better by also beating Australia the following year in a one-off Test match, thanks to Fazal Mahmood’s magnificent match analysis of 13 for 114 (in a Test in which an erstwhile Indian adversary, Gul Mohammad, played for Pakistan and scored the winning runs). India lost a three-Test series to the same Australian team 2-0. Pakistan undertook their first tour of the Caribbean in 1957-58 and the gifted Hanif made 337 in 16 hours 10 minutes to save the first Test; the West Indies won the next three, with Gary Sobers setting a new world record with 365 not out (and following it up with twin centuries in the following Test), but Pakistan managed a consolation victory in the final test, Fazal once again starring with the ball. India welcomed the West Indies in 1958-59 and lost 3-0, but Pakistan took on the same team at home under Fazal’s captaincy and won 2-1, including a Fazal analysis of 12 for 100 in the second Test. (The only loss, at Lahore, marked Pakistan’s first defeat in a home Test.) India toured England in the summer of 1959 for what turned out to be its last full Test series there, a 5-0 rout convincing Lord’s that the Indian players were unworthy of being hosted for an entire summer. It was then Pakistan’s turn to taste defeat, 2-0 at the hands of the Australian tourists of 1959-60; India went down to the same team 2-1, a marginally better result that served as a modest morale-booster when Pakistan came calling ten months later. But there was enough in these five years of performances to augur well for a higher standard of contest between the two subcontinental neighbours.

  The series that followed between them was, however, an unmitigated disaster. Though the scoring rate improved marginally from the doldrums of 1954-55, neither side was any more prepared to risk defeat than on the previous occasion, and tedium reigned supreme. Not only were all five test matches drawn, but so were all ten of the tour games with an assortment of regional sides.

  Pakistan began well in the first test in Bombay with centuries from both Hanif Mohammad and Saeed Ahmed in a total of 350, but India replied with 449 (the tiny paceman, Ramakant Desai, top scoring with 85 from number 10) and Pakistan had only lost 4 wickets for 166 when the Test ran out of time. Kanpur followed, the Test featuring a daily average run-rate of 155. When India replied with 404 to Pakistan’s 335, its first innings had concluded at the stroke of lunch on the fifth and final day! One of my favourite cricketers, the normally dashing M.L. Jaisimha, exemplified the torpor of the proceedings by batting 500 minutes for 99, making only five scoring strokes in the entire pre-lunch session on the third day and still managing to run himself out on the cusp of what would have been a maiden Test century. The third test at Calcutta was hampered by rain on the third day and time-consuming efforts to dry the pitch on the fourth, which cost some 270 minutes of playing time. Fazal declared on the final day to set India 267 runs to win in three hours, a laughable proposition by the standards of the series (India pottered to 127 for 4 in the allotted time). The fourth test at Madras was a high-scoring draw, India replying to Pakistan’s 448 with a then record 539 for 9 declared. That left the visitors time only to get to 59 for no loss before another draw was concluded. (The only fire blazing during the proceedings was a literal one, which consumed the eastern section of the stands on the fourth day.)

  The fifth Test, in Delhi, came closest to a decisive result. India made 463, Polly Umrigar scoring a third series century, bowled Pakistan out for 286 and, enforcing the follow-on, dismissed them again for 250. Only 74 runs were needed for victory but once again there was not enough time; only two overs were bowled, at a lugubrious pace, by the Pakistanis, Jaisimha showing aggressive intent by scoring 14 not out as the Indians finished 58 short. This was now the twelfth successive draw between the two countries. In the course of the five Test matches, Pakistan had averaged 35 runs scored per 100 balls faced, India doing only marginally better with 39 per 100. Indeed the batsmen’s lack of urgency was so palpable that of the 25 days of scheduled Test cricket, the run aggregate per day reached 200 in only 11 of them (even though it must be admitted that on most days the bowlers failed to attain the modern standard of 90 overs per day). To rub it in, though, on five of the eleven occasions in question, the faster scoring occurred on the final day of each test, usually when a result was out of the question.

  The tour was not without its share of incident, however. During a tour match in Baroda, a fan wearing a sharp ring cut Hanif’s fingers in the course of a handshake. The press was quick to suspect that a perverted assault had been intended to put the Pakistani star out of commission, and the young batsman’s mother rushed to India to tend to her son, but Hanif healed swiftly enough not to miss any of the Tests. He batted well enough – a century and three fifties – to maintain his ardent fan-following with the Indian crowds. But there was another drama involving Hanif. He had developed a severe infection in his toes, which necessitated surgery to remove his toenails, and for this reason wanted to opt out of the series before the first Test. His captain, Fazal, would have none of it, and prevailed upon Hanif’s mother to get him to play, bandaged toes and all. When Hanif had a 45-minute net before the Test (in shoes borrowed from a teammate with larger feet), his socks were soaked in blood. But his mother persuaded him that he owed it to Pakistan to play – fearing that if he didn’t, rumours would start that his reluctance to play was because he was a ‘mohajir’ (a migrant) from India and his loyalties were therefore divided. Hanif called his batting in the first test a ‘cricketing crucifixion’. He made 90 on the opening day in excruciating pain, was refused a runner (since his injury had nothing to do with the day’s play), spent the evening in hospital having his toes treated and resumed the next morning to go on to 160 before being run out. Hanif played the rest of the series without toenails: it was only by the time of the final Test that they had begun to grow back.

  An unhappier story concerned the young Indian batsman, Abbas Ali Baig, who had made a fairy-tale debut as a 20-year-old Oxford freshman undergraduate in 1959. (The touring Indians had been faring so poorly in England, at a time when Baig was carrying all before him for Oxford, that the British press urged the Indians to add him to their party – ‘Don’t be vague, ask for Baig,’ ran one headline. Grudgingly accommodated for a tour match against Middlesex, Baig promptly scored a century for the tourists; then pitchforked into the Test team, made 112 – run out – on debut in a losing cause, batting at number 3 against the pace of Trueman and Rhodes). An automatic selection against the Pakistanis, Baig failed in the first three Tests, his scores of 1 (the only single-digit score in an Indian total of 449), 13 (out of 404), 19 and 1 (in the low-scoring Calcutta match) leading to vicious charges that he, as a Muslim, was throwing away his wicket agains
t his co-religionists. Scores that, against any other opposition, would have been attributed to a loss of form, suddenly became evidence of disloyalty to some. The Indian team featured three Parsis, a Christian and a Sikh, but Baig was the only Muslim picked during the series, and he was dropped after the third Test. Many thoughtful Indians lamented the whisper campaign against him; but with Pakistan overtly identifying its cricketing fortunes with Islamic pride, the lot of a Muslim player on the other side, just thirteen years after Partition, had become invidious indeed.

  To what degree all of this impacted on a certain Hyderabadi allrounder is a matter of conjecture. But in the match between the tourists and South Zone, a star performer for the home team, taking six wickets with some remarkable swing bowling, was Ghulam Ahmed’s nephew, Asif Iqbal. A year later he was gone, a migrant to Pakistan – for whom he became a Test stalwart of considerable renown. Did he believe, as some Pakistanis have suggested, that his religion would impede his Test prospects in his native land? (The evidence for such a fear would have been scant – India has never played a test series without at least one Muslim player in its ranks [with the exception of one series against England in 1979], and often many – and Baig, despite his woeful form, played three of the five Tests in this series.) Or was it, as some Indians believe, that he thought his chances better if he attempted to qualify for a weaker team? Only Asif himself can answer.