Bridge across forever

Nothing in contemporary cricket is any longer kosher, and rightly so. When it comes to the crunch, what separates the champion team from the also-ran, is a whatever-floats-your-boat approach. However, when cricket confronts politics, especially on a totem like `national interest', the entire fraternity, from player to administrator to fan, is content to drift into a dog collar. One reason, obviously, is the radical difference involved in strident nationalisms - how one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. It is the kind of difference that is at the heart of the more-than-five-decade-long conflict over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Cricket is the casualty.

A possible solution would be to take decisions about normalising cricketing relations between the neighbours out of the purview of the respective boards, and instead subject them to ICC arbitration. Arbitration, mind you, not decisions by vote. Voting implies politics, and manipulation and manoeuvre, and that is precisely what needs to be avoided here.

One other thing the ICC must remember while arbitrating is to not do a dance on the claims and counter-claims of the political dispute. Apartheid was the one issue where a universal consensus made it possible not to draw a line between political quarantine and sporting contacts. Not even the Cold War, for all its apocalyptic dimensions, enjoyed - in terms of perspective, that is - the black and white nature peculiar to apartheid.

The India-Pakistan conflict, needless to say, is dominated by gray. The West, and the lone superpower in particular, likes to patronisingly picture the Kashmir issue as a "tribal conflict", while India, its moral upholstery in place, would imagine Srinagar's bond with New Delhi is a taunt to Mohammad Ali Jinnah's two-nation theory. Pakistan, on its part, would want to call India's bluff on exactly this matter by demanding a plebiscite to determine the issue.

To keep it simple, the arbitration ought to be two-pronged: (a) Identify a dispute: a fact-finding body decides on whether there is a clear and present danger to the holding of cricket matches either home or away between the two countries. If it is so, then the ICC recommends an appropriate neutral venue.

(b) Punitive sanctions: if either, or both, countries refuse to heed the ICC recommendation, severe punishment is meted out. The team(s) is suspended from all international cricket for a stipulated period.

The first is designed to take the wind out of the politicians' sails: if there is a genuine dispute, recognise it as such. The second is aimed at calling the politicians' bluff. How far can Indian politicians, for example, resist pressure from their constituencies if, say, India were banned from international cricket for a year just because these politicians are adamant that India play Pakistan only in multi-nation competitions?

Cynics, of course, will laugh such a suggestion for an enhanced ICC role right out of court. They will point to how the ICC's Anti Corruption Unit, for instance, is indifferent to emerging evidence on betting and match-fixing scams involving certain top current cricketers and some important tournaments, and "would rather keep the skeletons in the cupboard and present a sanitised image to the game's sponsors and the public", as the Telegraph had it.

The point being that if proper commitment is lacking in fighting even corruption, how can far more complex issues be tackled? But that is being disingenuous - what commitment can there be after the bridges are burnt, after the damage has been done? If it is too late, only too little can be done. At a time when the cricket establishment's ambitions are in overdrive - attempting to secure a beach-head in the US with the 2007 World Cup - and when counter-measures are being put in place (the Morocco Cup, for example) to meet the threat from FIFA to sports-minded youth, it cannot allow residual problems to arrest its advance. Alacrity and anticipation are called for, not locking the stable after the horse has bolted.

For the present, a concrete concern of the ICC should be to see if India, who haven't toured Pakistan for almost 14 years, can do that now. Forget the template statements like "subject to government approval" that have become mandatory in the minutes of every meeting between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on the issue. What are the facts on the ground?

Just before a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a bus outside the Pearl International Hotel in Karachi, which led New Zealand to abandon the 2002 series and scoot home on the first available flight, Mike Procter, the match referee, had commended the Pakistani authorities for the "good" security arrangements. During the Pakistan tour of India in early 1999, the government at home was almost paranoid about ensuring that the series remained incident-free: there were thousands of policemen on duty at each venue; spectators were thoroughly frisked not only at the gate but at two subsequent points before they finally took their seats; the teams were guarded round the clock by elite commandos; the visiting team's consulate regularly consulted on security arrangements, and was indeed allowed to monitor them. However, unlike the India tour where the Shiv Sena and other Hindu fringe groups had threatened to disrupt matches, there were no specific threats to the New Zealanders except for the general anti-Western sentiment due to the American-led War on Terrorism following 9/11.

Thus, despite no specific threats and near -foolproof security, a fedayeen attack couldn't be prevented. Indeed, virtually nothing can and there lies the rub in playing in Pakistan. Australia cancelled their tour of Pakistan slated for winter 2002 based on this assumption, and so did England and West Indies before that. With the war in Iraq understandably creating immense disquiet in Islamic countries, and with no slackening of tensions between the two neighbours, an Indian tour of Pakistan at this stage will only be inviting trouble.

What then could be explored is an annual or biannual rubber between India and Pakistan, an `Asian Ashes', at neutral venues - Dhaka or Toronto, say. Sharjah is too close to the tinderbox of the Persian Gulf, and at any rate the extent of flag-waving by expatriates during India-Pakistan matches is sooner than later bound to provoke the Emirates government to usher in some variant of the Tebbit Test. Singapore, too sanitised, is at the other end of the scale.

Dhaka, closer home, will be ideal for both teams; but for a Test series the same can't be said about other venues in Bangladesh. Which leaves Toronto and other Canadian venues with their Asian immigrants, wonderful facilities and, not least, that nation's growing commitment to cricket.

Since 80 per cent of cricket's finances come from TV coverage, which is independent of where any game is played, commercial interests needn't be drastically compromised. Yet, as noted cricket writer Sohaib Alwi has argued, the BCCI and the PCB could take an insurance policy that covers 50 per cent of the lost profits while "the ICC could insure against the balance of lost profits with premiums on that policy paid by all ICC members and a certain percentage of annual ICC revenue".

The ultimate reason for getting the show back on the road is, of course, what India-Pakistan matches usually do for the quality of the game: for example, their last encounter, the World Cup showdown on March 1, which saw Tendulkar on a tear and the much-bruited Shoaib Akhtar, 18 runs off his first over, stand there like a spare part. On their day, it could have been an Akram or an Inzamam, but on that afternoon India's diminutive daredevil, with his absolute reverence for something absolutely familiar, once again demonstrated how the game in its heart could be just as wonderfully unreconstructed as ever.

So what if jingoism misted the air like bargain scent? At the end of the day it seemed as if cricket had had gone 15 rounds with realpolitik and commercialism combined and had emerged bruised and tired but still ahead on points.