 |
| |
WEEKLY
SECTIONS |
 |
|
 |
| One rule for one, one for another |
|
|
|
Thursday, January 15, 2009
From Asif Iqbal
Former Pakistan and Kent cricket captain
LONDON: It has been over a year since Pakistan played its last Test match and a home series at the moment with anyone other than Sri Lanka or Bangladesh does not seem a possibility in the immediately foreseeable future. The PCB and its chief is trying his utmost to convince other teams to play in Pakistan but commendable as his efforts are, it would not appear to be up to him or the Board to make this happen.
To fault them therefore, as some have done, for not being able to ‘persuade’ foreign sides to tour Pakistan, is grossly unjust. The assessment and perception of Pakistan is created largely by events that take place inside the country and the reaction of society — consisting of leading politicians, officials and the media — to these events. That is where Pakistan seems to be losing out.
Living in the west it is not difficult to see the clear difference in the western attitude to events in India on the one hand and Pakistan on the other. As far as India is concerned, the perception, right or wrong, is that here is a country which is unequivocally against terrorism which means that it is for the war against terror without any reservations, whose people are solidly behind their government on this score, whose priority on this front will not change even if the government changes tomorrow, whose media is fully supportive of its government in its endeavours to fight terror and whose people, irrespective of their grudges against the west, know where to draw the line.
Regrettably, rightly or wrongly, none of these presumptions hold true for Pakistan. As far as Pakistan is concerned, there is an almost unanimous feeling that the overwhelming majority of its people have great sympathies for the objectives of the jihadis, although not all may agree with the methods adopted by them. This sympathy for their objectives has led to a fractured response to the fight against terror, most visible in the lack of political consensus, with the consequence that the results of this fight have not been what most had hoped for.
The media, especially the newly liberated electronic media, seems to lean heavily on those ‘experts’ whose views are very decidedly right wing and that is seen as feeding the sympathy that already exists for the jihadis. The result of all this is that when it comes to the fight against terror, India, whose attitude is seen as approximating much more closely to the west than PakistanĚs, has much more credibility than Pakistan and what it says goes much further than what Pakistan says.
Thus it is that following the Indian accusations after the Mumbai attacks, there is a widespread question mark even over the role of some Pakistani governmental agencies in such activities, thus damaging PakistanĚs cause further.
My purpose in mentioning all this is not to pronounce political judgement for unlike some former Pakistani cricketers, I have no desire to make a career switch to politics. The point of mentioning this is to say that irrespective of how hard the PCB tries, it does not seem likely that most western sides may be agreeable to tour Pakistan in the immediate future.
Reading between the lines, one senses that the Board perhaps feels that based on the analogy of the England tour of India which took place barely a fortnight after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan would have a good case for arguing that western sides should also tour Pakistan especially in view of the fact that it has, thank God, been several months since any such major terrorist event has taken place in Pakistan.
The England visit was a political statement made to show solidarity with India which is seen as being committed fully to the war against terror. Since that commitment is seen as lacking from the Pakistani people, government and media — in short the Pakistani nation as a whole — nobody sees any need to show solidarity with the Pakistani people.
Players also have a very negative assessment of Pakistan as a society, an assessment that has been building up for over two decades ever since Ian Botham started it all by saying it was a place he would like to send his mother-in-law to, which means that none of them are exactly falling over to visit the land of the pure.
The future of Pakistan cricket being something that they could not give a toss for, they have been more than willing to use the security situation to get out of a tour that nobody particularly looks forward to. What all this means is that perhaps the PCB would be well advised in not banking on a tour of Pakistan by a western Test playing nation materialising, that it should not raise public expectations that such tours will take place soon, and mentally keeping itself prepared to play PakistanĚs home series on foreign soil, most probably the UAE.
The objectives should be to ensure that if the series cannot be played in Pakistan then at least they should not be cancelled altogether or subjected to a long postponement, and that they should be relocated to some place where the weather and pitch conditions approximate as closely as possible to Pakistan.
The UAE would be the obvious choice where with the considerable Pakistani expatriate population, Pakistan would also get what crowd support there is; in any case, Test matches in Pakistan draw crowds that are almost embarrassing. Such an approach would also require that the PCB keep a clear cut off date in mind and if by that time a touring side has not confirmed that it is visiting Pakistan, then arrangements for holding the series at the neutral venue should begin forthwith.
If the decision is left open for too long, it makes it difficult to complete these arrangements in time which only leads to further loss of revenue. In acquiring this approach, the PCB also has to keep in mind the possibility of a terrorist event taking place at any time, for the PCB certainly has no control over this. If, God forbid, it should happen a few days before the tour or, worse still, during a tour, the loss both in cricketing and financial terms would be much greater.
The PCB is right in thinking that the England tour of India has set a precedent, but precedents are of value in courts of law and there is nothing whatsoever to indicate that other boards are seeing it as an example that binds them to tour Pakistan as well. No matter what is said by whom now, we may find that as time goes on and a tour draws closer, the arguments that apply to India may not quite apply to Pakistan. The best option for Pakistan cricket would appear to be to take cognizance of this now and plan the future accordingly.
|
|
|
| Back
| Send
this story to Friend | Print
Version |
|
|
|
ISSN 1563-9479 
