"I am happy we didn't tour Pakistan, and that the government didn't allow us to tour Pakistan. It may or may not have happened to us. But overall I am happy to be here (New Zealand)."
When I first read these words by Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the wake of the senseless attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore on March 3, I remember thinking to myself, "What a horribly selfish and nasty thing to say". And then comments from external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and home minister P. Chidambaram began flowing in and it all seemed like a bit of schadenfreude at the expense of the Pakistani government. Once India's three most important men had shared their views (yes, my tongue is firmly buried in my cheek), the gates had been thrown open.
Send in the clowns!
'Expert' after 'expert' and 'specialist' after 'specialist', everyone had a view about why Pakistan should be sidelined from world cricket and how cricket on the sub-continent had taken a dangerous turn. (Well, it's not just cricket — the sub-continent itself has taken a fairly ominous turn) Amidst all this mayhem, was a distraught Younis Khan apologising to the Sri Lankans on behalf of his country and saying that without cricket, the country was doomed, a despondent Inzamam-ul-Haq ruing the concept of teams not touring Pakistan, a fiery Imran Khan letting the ruling regime have it for the pitiful security provided in the name of "Presidential Security".
RULING regime? Ruling whom exactly? Certainly not those bone-heads who opened fire and hurled grenades at sportsmen. Then Zardari goes and claims that India is responsible for that shameful incident. Meanwhile, his policemen round up 50 suspects. The damage has been done. And yet, Lalit "Money Money" Modi sees fit to start whining about his beloved Indian Premier League, even as Chidambaram suggests it would be safer for the league not to clash with the general elections.
Far removed from all the talk of how much each franchise stands to lose in terms of revenue if the IPL is called off, is Pak-man. An average guy who goes to work, pays his taxes, prays, raises his children and when time permits, likes catching a match or two of cricket. To dive into the metaphor of the day, he'll eat all the pills (just like his buddy Pac-Man), in the hope that there's a nice cherry around the corner for that little bonus.
DENIED!!
Some stinking no-good ghosts pop up out of nowhere and that's the end of that.
No person in the right frame of mind would want to send a team to its potential death anymore, as sad as that is to say. While it's foolish to whine, "Oh, How can you live in a place where you could be blown up or shot at any time, yaaarrr?" (insert suitably whiny voice) like so many people who leave the sub-continent for greener pastures overseas, I can't help but feel maybe Dhoni had a point.
If the Indian team (as it was scheduled to be) was in Pakistan at the time and a similar incident has occurred, it's difficult to imagine the sheer nuclear amounts of firepower that the saffron army would get access to. They'd use it as a reason to push their anti-Muslim propaganda further and while it seems presumptuous, I will still say, there would be blood running through the streets of most of India's cities. In hindsight, I'm also very happy that the government didn't let India tour Pakistan.
1 comment:
Ah good, finally a post I agree with.
I don't understand why the pakistani cricket team should be punished... terrorism is a global problem, this event could have happened anywhere (or at least anywhere where there are extremists...which is almost, but not quite, everywhere).
The sad truth is this will lead to more restrictions and tighter control throughout the cricket (and everyday) world. This will no doubt translate in to more xenophobia followed by retaliatory extremism.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to SUFFERING. (yoda)
Poor ol' cricko, it's getting a bad rap nowadays.
Good use of the pak-man thing, very apt.
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