At SuperSport Park on Saturday, two of the world’s most popular teams will set aside the Kashmir, the threat of nuclear warfare and deep-rooted, if often impenetrable, religious, regional and political differences to play a World Cup cricket match against each other.
Not a few commentators, in the broader sense of the word, have offered the opinion that ”this won’t be about cricket. When India play Pakistan it’s like a war”.
Notwithstanding George Orwell’s jaundiced view that there is no greater cause of ill-will among nations than sport, this view, in this particular instance anyway, is mistaken. For once the platitudes about sport building bridges may ring true, however briefly.
Which is not to say it won’t be a fiery contest. In a purely cricketing sense there is immense rivalry between the two teams. In the context of this World Cup, the erratic form of both sides has thrown up a match that neither side can afford to lose. For the players of India and Pakistan to go home without reaching the Super Six stage would be to return to outrage and condemnation. The people of India and Pakistan tend to take their cricket seriously.
Even so, in a tournament dogged by political issues, there is no little irony that the 2003 World Cup has allowed the teams to get out onto the field together. Since India beat Pakistan at Old Trafford in the 1999 World Cup, the two countries have met on only seven occasions, four times in Australia, twice in Sharjah and once in an Asia Cup match in Bangladesh. Again, from a cricketing perspective the prospect of India’s gifted but inconsistent batsmen facing Pakistan’s powerful attack, spearheaded by the ”500 wicket man” Wasim Akram, is well-night irresistible. If the thought of Wasim bowling to Sachin Tendulkar doesn’t stir the juices, then very little will.
Most of all, though, the simple fact that they will be playing against each other represents a triumph for sport generally and cricket particularly. The fact that the buildup has been relatively low-key is largely due to the fact that both teams, and their camp-followers, have been concerned with more immediate issues, mainly survival in the tournament.
Other countries, too, have had issues to contend with and some, South Africa for instance, have managed to contrive them for themselves. The row over Errol Stewart is a case in point. Since the revelation last Friday that Stewart had effectively been banned from selection for South Africa as a consequence of his refusal to tour Zimbabwe with a South African A team, it has been all but impossible to gain any clarity on the matter from the United Cricket Board.
Chief executive Gerald Majola, who prior to the Stewart affair had earned an admirable reputation for honest, was the person who first offered his ”opinion” that Stewart should not be selected in the event of an injury to first-choice wicketkeeper Mark Boucher. Subsequently, Majola has wriggled around uncomfortably, offering a variety of different explanations none of which have helped clarify the matter whatsoever.
The issue is simple: is Stewart available to be considered for selection for South Africa? If not, who took that decision and on what grounds? Further, was the person who made the decision empowered to do so or should it have been a policy decision taken by the UCB’s general council.
It is unfortunate for the UCB that the Stewart issue came to light in the same week that the UCB accepted an apology from president Percy Sonn for getting publicly drunk in Paarl. The UCB might want to argue that the matters are not connected, but in the minds of the public, out there in the real word, they are. And what else did the UCB expect?
What is needed as a matter is a simple statement clarifying the position on Stewart. As much as the whole affair might seem to be largely hypothetical, it is a matter of principle and the UCB owes it to the country’s cricketers as well as those who support cricket to spell out the principles to which it adheres.
There is a similar fuss continuing in Zimbabwe over the wearing of black arm bands by Andy Flower, in particular, and Henry Olonga during Zimbabwe’s first World Cup match. This week it emerged that three of Flower’s team-mates had threatened not to play if Flower was not selected as a punitive measure. It goes even further, though, and it has been suggested that other of Flower’s team-mates have questioned his commitment to the team ‘s cause.
Stewart, Flower, Olonga, England and New Zealand all fall together in the sense that player and administrators have been forced to make decisions on political grounds, for all the guff that has been spread around about morality and safety and security. In these instances the personal has become political.
Cricket’s authorities like to justify their sport by arguing that players are role models. If this is the case, then surely they want intelligent role models capable of making their own informed decisions. More to the point, surely they want role models whose thinking is less muddled and whose principles are sounder than those displayed by many administrators and politicians in recent weeks.