Shadows Across the Playing Field

by Shashi Tharoor

  Then came the fifth and final Test, in Bangalore, an event that stood all expectations on their heads. Instead of the expected greentop for which Bangalore had become known, the curators produced a minefield that began cracking from the first day. Pakistan, hastily changing their team to include two spinners, won the toss and elected to bat, then saw the turbaned Indian left-armer, Maninder Singh, a Bedi clone, spin them out to the tune of 7 for 27 in just 18.2 overs (8 of which were unplayable maidens). When, in reply to Pakistan’s feeble 116, India coasted past the Pakistani total with only four wickets down, spectators expected a crushing Indian victory in helpful conditions, a not-unfamiliar script. But fate willed otherwise: a fortuitous catch off silly mid-off’s boot turned the tide, and the two Pakistani spinners, left-armer Iqbal Qasim and off-spinner Tauseef Ahmed, took five wickets each as India were dismissed for 145, a lead of only 29, the last six Indian wickets having fallen for 19. Pakistan, in their second innings, batted with far greater application, no fewer than eight batsmen entering double-figures. While Rameez Raja topscored with 47 and skipper Imran made 39, three unlikely batsmen may have made the decisive contributions precisely because they were least expected – night-watchman Iqbal Qasim with a stubborn 26, wicketkeeper Saleem Yousuf, batting at number 9, with 41 not out, and Tauseef Ahmed, who made just 10 in a ninth-wicket stand of 51 with the wicketkeeper, which ultimately put the game beyond India’s reach.

  The Pakistani second-innings fightback left India 221 to win. With Wasim Akram finding pace and swing in the conditions, they were soon 15 for 2. But Sunil Gavaskar, in what would turn out to be his final Test innings, played like the champion he had always been. Finding stubborn partners in Vengsarkar and Azharuddin, and batting better than any other player on display in the match, he stroked and defended and drove and guided the team to 180 for 7 before, at a heart-breaking 96, he was caught off Iqbal Qasim. Whereas the Indian spinners had tried too hard in the second innings, Qasim and Tauseef bowled with accuracy and discipline, letting the pitch do the rest. There was a brief spasm of hope for the Indians when Roger Binny, on his home ground and no slouch with the bat despite coming in at number 9, hit Tauseef for a huge six to bring up India’s 200. Just sixteen runs needed – and Binny snicked the very next ball to the keeper. It was all over: Pakistan had won the Test and with it, a series in India for the first time. Imran Khan, who had not even brought himself on to bowl in the second innings, was declared man of the series; Gavaskar, the man of the match, retired from cricket at the peak of his game.

  The one-day series that paralleled the Tests went decisively Pakistan’s way, 5-1 (the one loss occurring when Abdul Qadir was run out off the last ball with the scores level). The most astonishing match was the second ODI in Calcutta when Salim Malik, coming in at 161 for 5 (which was soon reduced to 174 for 6), in pursuit of 241 and with only tail-enders for company, blitzed one of the most remarkable all-out assaults ever seen on an Indian cricket field, making 72 off 36 balls and taking Pakistan to an improbable victory.

  The series was followed by the two countries jointly hosting the World Cup. Dreams of an India-Pakistan final were, however, dispelled when each lost its semi-final match against less-favoured opposition. The two sides then met each other in two one-day tournaments the following year, another Champions’ Trophy in Sharjah (where India lost) and an Asia Cup in Bangladesh (at which India beat Pakistan by four wickets, the Hyderabadi off-spinner Arshad Ayub taking 5 for 21, and went on to defeat Sri Lanka by six wickets in the final). As the public’s taste for ODIs seemed as inexhaustible as its penchant for instant coffee, the two sides met again in three more one-day tournaments the following season, 1989-90, all won by Pakistan: a Champions’ Trophy in Sharjah, a

  Nehru Cup in India, and an AustralAsia Cup in Sharjah again. The details of these tournaments, each as instantly forgettable as that cup of coffee, will not detain us unduly in this narrative, other than to record the trend. The real business of India-Pakistan cricket remains the Test tours, and the next of these occurred when India travelled to Pakistan in 1989-90, for a series in which, for the very first time, neutral umpires from England officiated in test matches between the two subcontinental neighbours.

  The innovation, for which credit must go entirely to Pakistan, made all the difference. The political tensions in the subcontinent were becoming unbearable; while the Khalistan movement had now been largely defused, the Kashmiri militancy – urged on, financed and supplied from across the border in Pakistan – was raging. In this climate, a Shakoor Rana could easily have triggered an incident whose ramifications might have spread well beyond the cricket field. John Hampshire, a former Test player himself, and John Holder were hardly infallible, but their professionalism was beyond dispute and the Indians would no longer have to step on to the field convinced that the umpires were in league with their opponents. This was their chance to avenge the result of the last home series, and to show that, given a level playing field, they too could take the fight to the Pakistanis in Pakistan.

  In the event, they did not quite pull it off. But nor did they lose: all four Tests ended in draws, but these were not the turgid affairs of the unlamented past. Rather, the cricket was often competitive, and the series featured at least one outstanding batting performance by an Indian, Sanjay Manjrekar’s colossal 569 runs at an average of 94.83 (including a double century, a century and three fifties). Many thought India had unearthed another Gavaskar, and the Manjrekar story remains a particularly disappointing one of unfulfilled potential, his career Test average of 37 unworthy of the greatness that lay within his grasp. But in this series he was virtually flawless, repeatedly saving his side’s blushes and doing so with a level of technical skill and classical elegance rarely displayed in the era of one-day cricket. Only Azharuddin, of all the other Indian batsmen, managed to score a century, though Navjot Sidhu, with three half-centuries including a 97, came close. The series also witnessed the debut of a 16-year-old Bombay prodigy, Sachin Tendulkar, who refused to be overawed by the occasion (or deterred by some hostile short-pitched bowling) and racked up a couple of crucial fifties in the Tests, both scored at vital stages. But Pakistan ended the career of the newly-appointed Indian captain, Kris Srikkanth, whose average of 13 (with a highest score of 36) resulted in his being unceremoniously dropped on his return home.

  The most impressive bowler on view was undoubtedly Wasim Akram, who took 18 wickets. Manoj Prabhakar bagged 16 for India, eclipsing both a declining Imran Khan’s 13 and Kapil Dev’s 12 (Kapil had a surprisingly lacklustre series after the first Test, in which he shone with seven wickets and a belligerent 55, scored from the depths of 85 for 6.) The Pakistanis racked up six hundreds amongst them, two of them for the underrated Aamer Malik. But all in all, it had to be admitted that this had not been a particularly memorable series. That it was not a disastrous one was thanks to the neutral umpires and to the individual merits of some of the players. That it was not more fun could be traced to the legacy of the Zia years, which had turned Pakistan into a more puritanical, humourless and joyless place to visit than any other cricketing destination. In a nation starved of entertainment and opportunities for public diversion, the cricket team was in effect being asked to bear the double burden of both epitomizing the nation’s aspirations and distracting the public from its lot. It was too much to ask of a dozen men in white, even if they brought a great deal of talent to bear on the task.

  Heat and Drought

  In October 1991 the two teams met again in Sharjah, this time for the Wills Trophy. They played each other three times, India winning the first encounter, Pakistan the second and India losing a one-sided final. At this tournament the grumbling that had begun in India about conditions in the ‘neutral’ venue finally erupted into the open. The Sharjah management, the Indians pointed out, was unequivocally biased in favour of Pakistan, where Abdur Rahman Bukhatir had learnt the sport. Umpires seemed to be chosen who, though nominally neutral, clearly were well-disposed towards Pakistan. Decisi
ons on such matters as when to invoke the rules for bad light always mysteriously seemed to be made against India’s interests. The two-hour interruption for prayer on Friday afternoons (Sharjah finals were always played on a Friday, the Muslim Sunday) seemed to energize the Muslim team at the expense of the others. It did not help that prominent amongst the fans in the expensive boxes at Sharjah was the figure of Dawood Ibrahim, a Bombay underworld don wanted by the police in his native land, who a year later would orchestrate the bomb blasts that brought down the Bombay Stock Exchange. India’s participation, many began to say, was merely legitimizing a spectacle mounted for the benefit (and profit) of India’s enemies.

  At the same time the insurgency in Kashmir, initiated under the Zia dictatorship, had received a new impetus from the competition for power amongst the two populist leaders of Pakistan’s newly-restored democracy. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who alternated in power twice each between 1988 and 1999, seemed anxious to outdo each other in the stridency of their rhetoric about, and tangible support for, jihad against India. The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Empire also freed large numbers of Afghan and Arab mujahideen to train their gun-sights on Indian Kashmir. As the 1990s dawned, some 250,000 Hindu Kashmiri Pandits, natives of Kashmir since times immemorial, found themselves expelled from their homes by Islamic militants armed and funded by Pakistan. Refugees in their own land, they turned an embittered eye towards Indo-Pakistani cricketing bonhomie in far-off lands.

  India, too, was beginning to change. A land whose pluralism was encoded in its collective DNA, and whose political secularism most Indians had grown up taking for granted, began to respond to the siren calls of Hindu chauvinism. Politicians from the Hindu right, notably the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Bombay-based Shiv Sena of the former cartoonist-turned-Fuhrer Bal Thackeray, began decrying the concessions given to Muslims in India and agitating against the government’s failure to hand over a disused mosque, the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, to Hindus to build a temple there to the Lord Rama, whose birthplace the mosque allegedly occupied. With communal tensions rising over these two developments, Hindu-Muslim riots occurred in various parts of India. Things were no better at the border with Pakistan, where daily exchanges of fire were reported. The two armies contested every inch of possible space, especially at the uninhabited Siachen glacier, 16,000 feet high, whose control was claimed by both sides. Talk of war was no longer implausible.

  Against such a background, it was expecting too much for cricket matches between India and Pakistan to remain mere sporting spectacles. As C.L.R. James had so memorably written decades earlier: ‘what do they know of cricket who only cricket know?’ India decided they would no longer play at Sharjah. The heady talk of continuing the frequent exchange of cricket tours also died down; though it was Pakistan’s turn to visit after the Indian tour of 1989-90, their hosts chose not to find it convenient to offer them dates.

  The two sides met at the World Cup in Australia in March 1992, India defeating Pakistan comprehensively by 43 runs. But India failed to qualify for the semi-finals, and it was Pakistan who went on to win the tournament. Oddly enough, in the midst of all the mounting tension, India and Pakistan were successful in their joint bid, along with Sri Lanka, to host the 1996 World Cup. But they played no serious cricket against each other in the interim. A South Asian contest amongst ‘A’ teams, or second elevens, in Bangladesh in December 1992 ended badly, with two matches and the final being cancelled after riots broke out in Dhaka. It did not help that, after three years of agitations and demonstrations, a group of Hindu fanatics had burst through a police cordon and demolished the disused Babri Masjid, triggering off months of violence across the subcontinent.

  With the World Cup looming, India reluctantly accepted an invitation to return to Sharjah after a two-year gap in April 1994. This was for another AustralAsian Cup, which Pakistan duly won, beating India by 39 runs in the final. In September India won the Singer Cup in Sri Lanka, beating the hosts in the final, their match against Pakistan having been abandoned without a ball being bowled because of torrential rains. Back in Sharjah in April 1995, India won the Asia Cup, again at Sri Lanka’s expense, the islanders having eliminated Pakistan (though Pakistan beat India comprehensively in the preliminary stages of the tournament). These tournaments were of little significance, other than to keep the subcontinental rivalry going in a neutral setting at a time when neither side was setting foot on the other’s territory. They also helped to set the stage for the great cricketing event of 1996: the World Cup.

  The Storm before the Lull

  The goodwill match in Sri Lanka by a joint India-Pakistani team was a wonderful curtain-raiser for the World Cup in the subcontinent. The Sri Lankan media, in particular, celebrated their neighbours’ ‘magnificent gesture of solidarity’ and much was written about the collective sense of South Asian honour and dignity revealed by the episode. But the tensions between the two big countries of the region were never far from the minds of players and spectators as they clashed, earlier than many would have hoped, in the quarterfinals in Bangalore.

  The Shiv Sena leader, Bal Thackeray, called for a boycott of the match, and it is sobering to realize that had the draw placed that quarter-final in Bombay (by now rebaptized Mumbai by a Senaled government), he might have been able to enforce his call. The Bangalore police swung into action, however, and no disruption occurred. What followed was the match of the tournament: exciting cricket, with fluctuating fortunes and a decisive result for the host team. This was Pakistan’s first match in India since the Nehru Cup final in November 1989, and it was to be their first loss to their traditional rivals since the 1992 World Cup.

  The day started with the withdrawal, through injury, of Pakistan’s new captain and best bowler, Wasim Akram. Aamer Sohail, who had never before led Pakistan, was thrust into the leadership, but he was not quite ready for the occasion. An insecure captain, he banished his most experienced player, Javed Miandad, to third man for the duration of the Indian innings, instead of consulting the ageing lion (or indeed his predecessor, the recently deposed Salim Malik, who had lost the captaincy under a cloud of accusations of gambling and match-fixing). The Indians, with a powerful 93 from Navjot Sidhu and contributions from the entire batting line-up, raced to 287 for 8, Ajay Jadeja spanking the bowling at the death for 45 off just 25 balls. India scored 57 runs in the final four overs, including 22 off Waqar Younus’ ninth.

  Not to be outdone, the Pakistani left-handed opening pair, Aamer Sohail and Saeed Anwar, responded with a blistering 84-run stand for the first wicket, Saeed’s breathtaking 48 taking him only 32 balls. The normally sporting Bangalore crowd greeted this exhibition in stunned silence, failing to applaud either of Saeed’s two sixes or his nine fours, whereas they had greeted each of Jadeja’s blows with a deafening roar – a sad indictment of the extent to which politics had trumped the love of the game. Srinath finally got Saeed, and though Sohail briefly steadied the ship, going on to 55 off 46 balls, his dismissal at 113 marked the beginning of the end. As the middle-order crumbled, first Salim Malik and then Javed Miandad, unaccountably batting as low as number 6, held the fort. As long as the legendary Miandad was in, the Indian spectators thought that Pakistan still had a chance. But this was no longer the Javed of the 1986 last-ball six: instead, the Indians were facing a batsman on the verge of retirement, playing on a world stage for the last time and struggling to remember his lines. The asking rate climbed as Javed failed to get the ball off the square, and when he was finally run out by a direct hit, his 38 had occupied 64 balls, for an embarrassing strike-rate of 59.37. Pakistan finished a woeful 39 runs short.

  The reaction in Pakistan was calamitous. A college student emptied his Kalashnikov into his TV set and himself; another fan succumbed to a heart attack. The players’ aircraft had to be diverted to Karachi to shield the players from the fury of the crowd that assembled to greet them at their scheduled destination, Lahore. The losing capt
ain, Wasim Akram, received death threats, with some reading dark motives into his failure to play in the crucial encounter (had he played and been too unfit to make an impact, he would have been pilloried as well). A judge admitted a legal suit against the team, hinting darkly at corruption. A senior Islamic cleric, Maulana Naqshabandi, declared that Pakistan’s defeat was its penalty for having elected a woman, Benazir Bhutto, to rule; such ‘obscene’ imitations of Indian culture were bound, he argued, to bring about such tragic results. It took weeks for the sense of betrayal and grief to die down.

  It is intriguing to contemplate the kind of reception the Indians might have got had they qualified for the final in Lahore. But they fell, in a semi-final disgraced by crowd trouble in Calcutta, to the Sri Lankans, who went on to beat Australia in the final with the raucous support of the Pakistani fans. It is unlikely, in the prevailing climate of the era, that an Indian team would have been applauded in quite the same way as the Sri Lankans were by the Lahore crowd, but the question remains one of the more fascinating ‘what-ifs’ left behind by a memorable tournament.