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Cricket Can’t Be The Only Avenue For Cross-Border Diplomacy

Australia's captain Pat Cummins, absent through injury from the ongoing edition of the ICC Champions Trophy, said what needed saying: The tournament is structured to give India the best chance of winning. 

As someone said on microblogging platform X, recently,

If that sounds over the top, consider the backstory. The International Cricket Council picked Pakistan to host this latest edition of a tournament last played in 2017.

These decisions — reviving the tournament and identifying the host nation — were not arrived at unilaterally. All the major cricket-playing nations were part of the discussions leading to these decisions — and that includes India.

India’s Tantrums

Despite having been a party to these decisions, the Board of Control for Cricket in India began throwing the toys out of the pram. First, it insisted that its team would not play in Pakistan. Why not? No one — not the board, nor the government — has categorically given a reason; it is left to social media and to bloviating TV anchors to talk of Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism. If that reason is legitimate, surely it is up to the government to make an official statement to that effect. 

In October 2024, India's external affairs minister S Jaishankar travelled to Pakistan to participate in a multilateral meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. What happened between then and January 2025 for India — or its cricket board — to refuse to travel to Pakistan? Or, put differently, when the foreign minister can travel to events in Pakistan, why can't cricketers?

There is no official response.

So the ICC, which needs to stay in the good books of India, bent over backwards and permitted India to play all its games at the Dubai International Stadium. India is well within its rights to refuse to play in a particular country — but in such a case, its recourse is to pull out of the tournament. In this instance, it was being intransigent because it knew money power was on its side — India's participation means increased sponsorship, advertising revenue, and eyeballs; its absence, not. 

India Being Petty? 

Next up, India said its captain will not travel to Pakistan for the mandatory group photo that precedes every multilateral tournament, where the captains are pictured with the trophy. Then it said it would not have the name Pakistan on the logo of the team jersey — again, in contravention of a norm that says in every multilateral tournament, the participating teams will have on the right breast of the uniform sport a logo incorporating the trophy, the name of the tournament, and the name of the host nation. Mercifully, better counsel prevailed in the face of criticism. 

Most recently, the name of the host nation somehow got erased from the branding on the TV feed for India's opening match against Bangladesh — yet another act of pettiness that the ICC has since tried to pass off as a "technical glitch". What glitch, though? The ICC makes one logo for the tournament, which features on the team jerseys and on the various broadcast feeds and passes it on to all concerned. What glitch accounts for the host nation's name being dropped from one feed alone? Don't ask, because no one will tell.

Unfair Advantages

Consider this: India entered the semifinal round and played the knockout game at the Dubai stadium where it is based. Its opponent, Australia, traveled to Dubai for the encounter and to play in unfamiliar conditions after having played all its group games in Pakistan. If that doesn't meet the criterion of unfair advantage, what does?

Consider this, too: New Zealand played the semifinal in Pakistan. The Kiwis have been preparing for this tournament for a long time, climaxing with a schedule that has seen the team spend a month in that country in the lead-up to the event. Now the team will have to travel to Dubai and play the final in conditions it has not prepared for — while India, again, has the advantage of playing in conditions it has thoroughly familiarised itself with.

New Zealand will play India in the finals on Sunday.

A tournament should be played according to the rules and conditions that have been laid down by the organising body and agreed to by all stakeholders. If for any reason you cannot comply, then the only course open is — or should be — to withdraw.

This leads to a larger question: Why is cricket, alone, the vehicle for international diplomacy? In the run-up to the ICC Champions Trophy, a group of 160 British Parliamentarians wrote to the England Cricket Board, saying that the England team should not play against Afghanistan, in response to the Taliban's violation of women's rights in that country. The ECB, mercifully, gave its team the go-ahead to play. 

This is not to suggest that the Taliban's oppression of women in Afghanistan is not egregious — but if you want to sanction that country, then the way to do it is politically. Cut off political, diplomatic and trade ties, and isolate the country the way South Africa was isolated during the Apartheid. That is fair. But to carry on business as usual in all these spheres, but to draw a line when it comes to cricket is a cheap play to the gallery. 

The same argument applies to India-Pakistan cricket contests. If India's hockey teams — both abled and visually impaired — can play Pakistan on Pakistan soil, if Pakistan's cricket team can travel to India to play the ICC ODI World Cup in 2023 if its women's team can come to India to play in the ICC Women's World Cup later this year, what was the point of the BCCI refusing to allow the men's team to play the ICC Champions Trophy in Pakistan?

To underline a point made earlier: None of this is to defend Pakistan's record in fostering cross-border terrorism. It is merely to raise a question:

The BCCI's — and by extension, India's — actions are a calculated play to a jingoistic gallery. The pity is, India has fielded an excellent all-round team, capable of winning the tournament on merit. Such acts of pettiness by the board will, unfortunately, taint such a victory, if and when it comes, for no fault of the cricketers themselves.

PostScript:

"It is the greatest rivalry in sport". "The atmosphere is electric". And so on, through the whole lexicon of cliches that were birthed at a time when India and Pakistan competed on the cricket field on near-equal terms. Here's the thing, though -- it's been well over a decade since Pakistan was anywhere close to being competitive, and not just against India either. The match between the two teams last Sunday in Dubai is an example of how flat, insipid, such match-ups have been in recent times. All this "excitement" is artificial, whipped up in television studios in an effort to increase sponsorship and get adrenalin-charged crowds thronging to the stadium — but I can't think of a single encounter in recent times that justified all this hype. Cease and desist, please? And still, on the cricket, the saddest sight I saw was not that of a once-great cricketing nation's continued implosion, but this — Pakistan fans wholeheartedly celebrating a match-winning century by Virat Kohli. We used to be like that; we used to be capable of celebrating good cricket, even by our opponents. When did we change?

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