Trip to Pakistan

From Madan Raja, United States
"It's always hard to imagine the amount of pressure on these young shoulders." There was hardly a commentator who did not mention this line when he was commenting on a India v Pakistan match. Pakistan as an opponent suddenly made any match important, enjoyable and lot to talk about after retirement. Of course, this was sometime back- when chasing 270 was not common, Sanjay Manjerakar had a permanent place in the ODI squad with a strike rate of 64 and probably nobody had heard of Twenty20.

Both nations had so many things in common. Both liberated at almost the same time, having identical problems to sort out at home. Religion somehow crept in at some point and kept the spark alive between both the countries. And not to mention that majority of the population in both the countries followed the same sport. And this sport was fueled by an audience that was equally vociferous and demanding. After hearing about the incident in Lahore, I was pretty much convinced I might never witness those moments again and wanted to share a few memories of Indo-Pak matches.

A cash-strapped Sri Lankan cricket board probably saw this as an opportunity to kill two birds in one stone. One was to get some revenue out of the tour. And second to prove to the world that cricket of all sports could never be affected by terrorists. If nothing had happened, the world would've hailed Sri Lankans for their courage instead of talking about the darkness PCB is staring at today. What they did not understand is that it is hard to deal with lunatics like the terrorists. They only crave for publicity, money and some way to trouble people. They know that incidents such as this will be shown ad nauseam as breaking news on the various news channels, reporters will be mentioning this for at least a month and there will be debates and blogs (such as this one). But I digress.

My memories about the Indo-Pak rivalry go back to the World Cup 1996. I was 11 at that time and the match was played at my hometown Bangalore. This was the first D/N match at Chinnaswamy stadium. Ajay Jadeja had hit Waqar to every part of the ground and India made a good looking score of 287. We went out to play gully cricket believing that the match was in the bag. When we came back, Anwar and Sohail decided that Pakistan had to win WC twice in a row. They just thrashed the bowlers to all parts of the ground. 84 in ten overs and the whole of Bangalore was silent. Two bowlers from our our own state (Karnataka) were made to look like bowling machines. Anwar fell after a loose shot and gave a chance for the audience make some noise. But, Sohail kept going and silence pervaded again. Sohail was then removed by Prasad.

We kids remember discussing the dismissal almost every time we talked about cricket. The rest was history. A poster was released that had frame by frame shot of Sohail dismissal which soon became a must have for all kids.

Then came the Sahara tournament in Canada. If I remember correctly, the first time ESPN started broadcasting cricket matches and first time I heard Harsha Bhogle. In the second season Ganguly was hailed as an all-rounder and Inzy became famous after the 'alloo' incident. After the third season, in 1999 was when tensions were again rising between the two nations and cricket suffered all the way. The same charm of beating Pakistan wasn't there anymore even when the cricketing ties were restored. And now it has come to a grinding halt.

I am pretty much sure ICC has lot to think about after this incident. 2011 is not far away and things are definitely not looking stable. Of the 10 nations that were fit to play test cricket, Zimbabwe fell apart, Bangladesh are still minnows and now Pakistan have a problem on their hands. If ICC stages a dull tournament like the 2007 WC in 2011, there might be need for a new organization to lead cricket. But what Indians will miss the most is a classic India-Pakistan match.