Shadows Across the Playing Field
Page 8
The World Cup also ushered in a profusion of one-day matches between the two sides. Pakistan almost immediately had their revenge at the Singer Cup in Singapore in April, and again in the first match of the Pepsi Cup in Sharjah later the same month, but India beat them in the second match, before losing to South Africa in the final. Then, in September, India and Pakistan played six matches in Toronto, of all places, at a ground run by the Toronto Skating and Curling Club. Sharjah was once again out of favour with the Indians, despite the effort they had made to return there in the lead-up to the World Cup, but the idea of a neutral venue remained attractive. The sponsors (an Indian conglomerate unfortunately named Sahara, which made most internationally minded people think of an African desert) knew what they were up to: the games were not aimed at the handful of expatriate Canadians watching them, but at an estimated television audience hundreds of millions strong. Pakistan won a closely contested series 3-2, and the ratings stayed high. The two sides then did not meet again for a year, until the Independence Cup to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of India’s freedom. Saeed Anwar used the occasion to set a new world record by carting India’s bowlers all over the Chepauk ground in Chennai for 194, before Pakistan lost the best-of-three finals 2-0 to Sri Lanka. Come September, and the two teams were back in Toronto again; this time India inflicted a 4-1 drubbing in the six-match series, with one game abandoned as a result of inclement (that is to say, Canadian) weather.
This second series witnessed an extraordinary incident when an Indian spectator repeatedly hailed the rotund Pakistani batsman, Inzamam-ul-Haq, as aaloo, or potato, provoking the incensed player to leap into the stands with a bat to administer a sound thrashing. An alert security guard prevented the actual infliction of violence, and Inzamam was escorted off the field in high dudgeon; but Inzamam’s charge that the spectator was, in addition to his persona, also abusing his religion and his country, served as an unwelcome reminder of the passions dividing the two nations. Nonetheless, on the way back home, the Indian team stopped in Pakistan for a three-match ODI series, which Pakistan won 2-1. (The Pakistanis, playing as they were at home, had the luxury not available to India of changing their team, which they did, even axeing their captain of the previous week in Toronto, Rameez Raja.) While some saw this series as contributing to a surfeit of matches, increasingly devoid of significance, between the two sides, not everyone agreed. The Pakistani legend Hanif Mohammad, welcoming the first Indian team to visit Karachi in a decade, reportedly said that ‘the more the exchanges [of cricket teams] the less emotional people will get. I would even go to the extent of saying that one day our two countries should unite again.’3
That was a far-fetched hope, but the desire to see cricket serve as an instrument of diplomacy at a time of high tension between the two countries was pervasive. When the Indians arrived in Pakistan they were accorded security at a level normally offered only to heads of state, complete with snipers on rooftops: the last thing Pakistan wanted was a successful attack on their Indian guests on Pakistani soil. Nonetheless the Indians received a hostile reception in Karachi, where stones were thrown on the field by spectators, order being restored only when the match referee, a Sri Lankan, threatened the hosts with forfeiture if the crowd was not brought under control. Half a year later, both countries exploded nuclear devices. A rivalry which had once been described as ‘a communal riot with artillery’ had now escalated into the threat of mutual annihilation. And still the two countries played cricket with each other!
A couple of months after the nuclear tests, Pakistan beat an injury-riddled Indian team in Toronto, in a series surprisingly free of rancour. A few months after that, Pakistan toured India, returning India’s visit from nine years previously. It was the first Pakistani tour of India since 1986-87. A peculiar (and thankfully, never to be repeated) arrangement meant that their three test matches were divided into a two-Test ‘mini-series’ and an ‘Asian Test Championship’ also involving Sri Lanka. But Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena announced that Pakistani cricketers would ‘not be allowed to set foot on Indian soil’ in view of the continuing killings by Pakistanbacked terrorists in Kashmir. Thackeray made his threat at a time when Hindu chauvinism had moved from the lunatic fringe to the mainstream of Indian political discourse, and when his party was a constituent of the BJP-led coalition government in New Delhi, so his warnings had to be taken seriously. Fortunately, the Central government decreed that the tour would proceed, even if Thackeray had the ability to prevent any matches taking place in Mumbai. A few days before the arrival of the Pakistani tourists, his supporters dug up the pitch at New Delhi’s Ferozeshah Kotla, where the second Test was scheduled to be played. Shiv Sena thugs also attacked the offices of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, breaking windows, trashing files and damaging historic trophies. It is entirely to India’s credit that despite these provocations, the tour went ahead without disruption.
It did not just go ahead: it produced two of the finest India- Pakistan cricket matches ever played. The first Test, in Madras (now rebaptized Chennai), saw a remarkably high standard of cricket, seesawing fortunes and a heart-stopping climax. Pakistan won the toss and batted, but ran into the Indian leg-spinner, Anil Kumble, in peak form, his 6 for 70 reducing them to 238 all out. The Indians, in reply, did not fare much better, half-centuries from Dravid and Ganguly propelling them to 254 all out (Pakistani offspinner Saqlain Mushtaq taking 5 for 94). The Pakistani second innings was dominated by a majestic 141 from the mercurial opener Shahid Afridi. Already the first Shahid (out of five with the same name previously picked for Pakistan) to play in more than a single test, Afridi brought his reputation for one-day fireworks into the Test arena and transformed his side’s fortunes. It was entirely thanks to him that Pakistan totalled 286, despite the last six wickets falling in a heap for 11 runs, the Indian medium-pacer Venkatesh Prasad finishing with 6 for 33 off just 10.2 overs on what was supposed to be a spinners’ wicket.
Afridi’s assault left India a target of 271 runs on a crumbling pitch. Only one batsman seemed capable of rising to that challenge, and he nearly met it alone: Sachin Tendulkar battled for 405 minutes as all around him fell like ninepins. Only one other batsman in the side, wicketkeeper Nayan Mongia, reached double figures as Wasim and Waqar blasted away the top of the order and Saqlain spun his web to the tune of 5 for 93. When Tendulkar was finally dismissed for 136, the score was 254 for 7, with 17 runs needed from the last three Indian wickets. It was beyond them. Less than four overs later, India were all out for 258, and Pakistan had won by 12 runs. The extraordinary triumph was generously applauded by the spectators, who gave the visitors a standing ovation as they ran a victory lap around the stadium. Perhaps this might not have been possible in the North, where memories of Partition still endure and Pakistan is still experienced as a personal wound by many; or perhaps it is simply a tribute to the civilized and genteel nature of the people of Chennai. But it was a fine augury, taking place while the anxieties roused by the nuclear tests were still fresh in the minds of people on both sides of the border.
The Second Test took place in Delhi after all, the vandalized pitch having been repaired in time. (The authorities had even engaged snake charmers, in case the Shiv Sena carried out its threat to release snakes into the grounds.) Saqlain again took five wickets in India’s 252 all out, before Kumble, with four wickets, and the off-spinner, Harbhajan Singh, with three, reduced Pakistan to 172 all out. India prospered in its second knock, the talented Sadagoppan Ramesh (who was to be unfairly dropped before his time) scoring 96 in only his second test match, leading India to 339 all out. Pakistan began as if the target of 420 was within reach, Saeed Anwar and Shahid Afridi putting on a century partnership in 24 overs. But from then on it was all Kumble, his lift, topspin and bounce making the wily spinner only the second man in the history of test cricket to capture all ten wickets in an innings. Kumble took 10 for 74, Pakistan were bowled out for 207, and the ‘mini-series’ was squared.
What shou
ld have been the decisive third Test of the series then became the first match of an Asian Test championship. Despite being reduced to 26 for 6 on the opening morning, Pakistan won the match by 46 runs, thanks to a magisterial 188 not out by Saeed Anwar in the second innings, which made all the difference between the sides. Unfortunately the Calcutta crowd once again let themselves down, following an incident in which Tendulkar was unjustly given run out after making his ground but taking evasive action to avoid a Pakistani fielder. After two interruptions caused by a rain of bottles, stones and assorted projectiles tossed on the field by the crowd, the spectators were all thrown out of the Eden Gardens and the match was completed in a deathly hush, before totally empty stands. This had never happened before (nor, I am glad to say, has it occurred since). The notion of a spectator sport being played without spectators has been mocked by some, but of course the millions of spectators watching the match at home on their television screens were unaffected. It was a sad measure, though, of the extent to which even fans at one of India’s most refined cities only come to cricket matches to watch their side win.
There was also a disagreeable coda to the Indo-Pakistani rivalry as the Asian Test Championship proceeded. Pakistan gamed the system of bonus points effectively, Wasim Akram keeping himself out of the attack in Lahore long enough to ensure that Sri Lanka gained the bonus points necessary to eliminate India from the Championship. Pakistan then went on to crush Sri Lanka in the final. India would have given them a tougher time, but they could scarcely blame Pakistan for taking advantage of the rules.
Hiatus and Resumption
The Calcutta fiasco turned out to mark the end of a phase of intense competition between the two countries on the cricket field. The action shifted to the battlefield instead, as Pakistani infiltrators seized an unattended hilltop in Kargil in the spring of 1999 and an undeclared war began. The Indian Army fought resolutely to expel the intruders, but at a terrible price in lives; meanwhile, Pakistan endured the world’s opprobrium for its deceitful conduct. The Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, facing down his Hindu chauvinist allies, had made an extraordinary visit to Pakistan just in March, bearing an olive branch. While he was being greeted effusively by his hosts, they were planning to stab him in the back by seizing the heights above Kargil. Normal relations with such a duplicitous regime, most Indians felt, were unthinkable. That included cricketing relations too.
But there was a World Cup to be played, in the English summer, and as luck would have it, India and Pakistan were drawn against each other at the ‘super six’ stage of the tournament. There was no question of refusing to play the other, and no Bal Thackeray to attempt to disrupt the proceedings. Hotel rooms in Manchester jacked up their prices to accommodate the flood of subcontinentals pouring in to watch the contest. The police were on high alert, given the raging war between the two countries at home. Some 90 per cent of the crowd in the stands were South Asian. No cricket match in England had ever been surrounded by quite as much tension. In his evocative and richly detailed account of the encounter, the Indian writer Ramachandra Guha asked, ‘Had two teams ever played a cricket match while their armies fought a battle on an 18,000- foot hilltop a million miles away?’4 The London Times suggested, hopefully, that if diplomacy was war by other means, then cricket could prove an attractive alternative form of crisis management.
The Indian skipper throughout the 1990s, Mohammad Azharuddin, was himself Muslim, and at some level the pressure must have been intolerable for this normally taciturn stylist. He could not have been unaware that there would always be Hindu zealots in India willing to attribute any failure on his part to disloyalty; Thackeray had made a signature campaign out of his argument that Muslim Indians routinely supported Pakistan in cricket matches between the two countries. Azharuddin had handled previous Indo-Pak encounters with grace, but this was the first time a contest was happening in the midst of a shooting war, when every sin of commission or omission on his part could have been interpreted as the result of his not trying hard enough against his co-religionists. At the same time, his was a long record both as player (he had represented India since 1984) and as captain (since 1990), and he could no doubt take comfort in the conviction that most fair-minded people would not judge him by one match out of hundreds. But India had not been playing particularly well in this World Cup, and Azhar himself had come under withering criticism for his and his team’s performances. His situation added an extra element of piquancy to an already charged encounter.
Azhar, winning the toss on a cold and overcast day, chose to bat, as he had done in India’s victories over Pakistan in the two previous World Cups, and scored a scratchy half-century (59) in a modest Indian total of 227 for 6 (Dravid 61, Tendulkar 45). That was enough for the Indian bowlers to defend; they bowled Pakistan out for 180, Azhar himself taking two superb catches, one a magnificent diving catch at slip to dismiss the well-set Saeed Anwar on 36. The riots that had been feared by the Manchester authorities never occurred; a British tabloid ran the headline, ‘Indian Hope Trick: Azza Wins But it’s Much Urdu About Nothing’! On the same day, six Pakistani soldiers and three Indian officers died in Kargil.
Though no bilateral series could be planned between the two countries given the situation with Pakistan – where the architect of Kargil, General Pervez Musharraf, had come to power in a coup – India and Pakistan kept meeting at one-day tournaments. In January 2000 they were both in Australia for a tri-series; India played Pakistan four times, and lost on three of those occasions. Two months later, the two sides shared a victory each at the Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah. A solitary encounter at the Asia Cup in Dhaka in May went Pakistan’s way. But there was little appetite in India for normal sporting relations with Pakistan after Kargil, and the Sahara Cup scheduled for Toronto in September was called off; without the fig leaf of other participating teams in a wider tourney, India was not prepared to play Pakistan.
Meanwhile, tensions on the border became unbearable. An assault by Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorists on the Indian parliament on 13 December 2001, nearly provoked all-out war, with India mobilizing its forces on the border. Not surprisingly, there was no cricket of any kind played between the two countries between May 2000 and the next World Cup in South Africa in March 2003 (fortuitously, the two sides did not meet at the ICC Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka in 2002; Pakistan lost early, and India and Sri Lanka shared the trophy after the finals were washed out). By 2003, with Indian forces gradually climbing down from their posture of war-readiness, and with fewer subcontinental expatriates at the ground, the clash at Centurion Park was marginally less tense than in Manchester. India preserved their perfect record against Pakistan in World Cups by winning yet again, chasing down an impressive Pakistani total of 273 for 7 with breathtaking ease and nearly five overs to spare.
Finally, a gradual relaxation of political tensions changed the cricketing climate too. Pakistan, forced to choose sides in President Bush’s ‘global war on terror’, abandoned the Taliban but briefly thought it could run with the hare in Kashmir while hunting with the hounds in Afghanistan. Two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf by disgruntled Islamists rapidly proved otherwise, and Pakistan jettisoned its support for terrorism against India. The peace process that followed culminated in another visit by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to Islamabad in January 2004. Handshakes are not often termed ‘historic’, but the one between Vajpayee and Musharraf in Islamabad on that occasion readily earned the adjective. After three years of bristling hostility verging on war, and less than five years after a bloody clash of arms across the snowy wastes that divide them in Kashmir, not to mention the 56 years of mutual tension that had marked their relationship, the two countries seemed genuinely on the verge of a real and lasting peace. Vajpayee, once a leading member of a party whose platform called for the undoing of Partition and the re-creation of an ‘undivided India’, had proved he could transcend the past by paying tribute at the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahor
e, a shrine to that country’s founding. And Musharraf, a trained man of war whose own family left India for Pakistan upon Partition, had shown signs of his determination to re-invent himself as a man of peace.
With general elections looming in India, the BJP-led government was eagerly promoting a ‘feel-good factor’ in the country at large. A cricket tour happily followed, India returning to Pakistan for their first Test series there since 1989-90. The two sides were facing each other in a Test for the first time in nearly five years.
Pakistan’s welcome to the Indian team was genuine. The security situation in that country in recent years had led to other countries besides India repeatedly cancelling or postponing tours, and the Pakistani board was financially strapped. A cricket tour by India was likely to be a bonanza for the board, and so it proved. The Indian team under Sourav Ganguly was perhaps the strongest India had ever sent to Pakistan, and they gave a confident account of themselves, winning both the Test series 2-1 and the ODIs 3-2; but as the scoreline suggests, the sides were closely matched and Pakistan was hardly found wanting even as they lost a home series to India for the very first time. India won the first ODI, in Karachi, by 5 runs, despite an Inzamam century; Pakistan fought back in the second to prevail by 12, despite a blazing 141 by Tendulkar. The third, in Peshawar, saw Pakistan taking a 2-1 lead in the series with a threewicket win. Then came India’s Lahore miracles: 70s by Dravid and Mohammad Kaif helped them to level the series, and in the decider, a silken Laxman century and a magnificent catch in the deep by Kaif sealed a 40-run triumph, and with it the series.
There was a moving sidelight to the Indian victory. The Indian team included 19-year-old Irfan Pathan, one of three Muslims playing for India in the series (the others being paceman Zaheer Khan and batsman Mohammad Kaif). Pathan hailed from Gujarat, a state in which a horrific anti-Muslim pogrom had occurred just two years earlier, in early 2002; in its wake, many Hindus with loud voices and great influence had sought to redefine Indianness on their own terms. Neither Pathan’s religion nor his ethnicity would have qualified him as Indian enough in the eyes of these chauvinists. He is a Muslim, and not just a Muslim but the son of a muezzin, one whose days are spent calling the Islamic faithful to prayer. Worse still, he is a Pathan, whose forebears belong to a slice of land that is no longer territorially part of India. To be a Gujarati Muslim Pathan might be thought of a triple disqualification in this age of intolerance. Irfan Pathan did not just shrug off his treble burden, he broke triumphantly through it – without apology for his identity, or his faith. Interviewed after his three for 32 in the last one-day international clinched India the series, Pathan told Dean Jones of his happiness that India had won ‘after’ (not ‘because of’) his bowling, and attributed this success to his Maker. ‘God is with me. I knew with God’s help I’ll bowl well. I had that confidence in God.’ So the muezzin’s son had invoked Allah’s blessings on his team, oblivious to the fact that its opponents were playing under the green banner of an Islamic Republic. What a wonderful re-invention this was of Indian secularism, and of all the elements that had made India, despite all its flaws and tensions, so different a land from Pakistan.