While I was a little disappointed at our cricketing results, I was amazed at the public relations success of the tour. The conduct of both teams on and off the field had been in the noblest traditions of the sport but the public welcome to the Indian team had exceeded all expectations. The people of Pakistan seemed unanimously to be conveying a yearning to live in peace with its neighbours; that even though we had problems to resolve, there was so much to be gained through peace. The Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Shiv Shankar Menon, later appointed foreign secretary, summed up the tour perfectly. He said, ‘You received 20,000 Indian fans during the tour. You have sent back 20,000 Pakistani ambassadors to India.’
As the tour ended, a senior official of the Indian government who had witnessed the last two ODIs in Lahore came up to me and said, ‘I am extremely worried because when your team visits India next year, we cannot possibly reciprocate the welcome you have given us in Pakistan.’
The public reaction to the Indian tour was in fact a political statement that the people of Pakistan had made, establishing a high water-mark in people-to-people relations that the government and establishment could not ignore. In its sixty-year history Pakistan had been dominated by military dictators who ordained, through the censored media and through government edicts, the state of relations between Pakistan and India. Unlike in India, openings for people to express themselves had not been part of a democratic process. The result was that genuine public opinion had no barometer readings and relations were gauged mainly from sponsored media opinion, government directives and compliant politicians. The public reaction to the Indian tour had seen the spontaneous reflection of the people’s voice.
PCB could claim a small portion of the credit for the public relations success of the tour through ironing out the numerous problems of logistics and scheduling arrangements before the tour began. Briefing players and spectators on treating the game as a sport and not as a battle involving national honour was also part of the educating process. Finally, challenging the people to show a traditional welcome and sportsmanship had its effect. The real heroes of the public relations success were the two teams, their captains and of course the general public, who gave the series a happy carnival atmosphere instead of the grim, acrimonious matches that had been played in the past.
The huge peace-building success of the 2004 series brought accolades from all corners of the world, including non-cricketing sources. The prestigious Laureus International Sports Forum in Portugal announced at its annual dinner – similar to the Oscars ceremony – its top award to the Indian and Pakistani teams as the outstanding sporting success of the year. In a widely televised event the ambassadors of Pakistan and India received the award, ahead of results in soccer, rugby, tennis, golf and the Olympics.
In New York, the UN secretary-general announced a special award to the two teams for their contribution to peace through sport. Both teams were designated UN ambassadors of Peace and a high profile ceremony planned at the UN for the award. Unfortunately, the tight international calendar prevented both teams being free at the same time to accept the award.
Recognition for the successful series also came from an unusual source when an entrepreneur in Geneva suggested that both teams play a cricket match on ice! I gave the entrepreneur a rather curt reply, stating that the teams were engaged in playing serious cricket and were not a circus act!
Pakistan in India 2005 and its Sequel
The path-breaking success of 2004 led to subsequent series – Pakistan in India 2005 and India back in Pakistan in 2006 – continuing on the path of friendship at the public level and impeccable behaviour by the teams on and off the field. Inevitably there were a few problems that had to be resolved through diplomacy.
Before proceeding to India in 2005, I had raised an objection to a match being scheduled in Ahmedabad, which a year earlier had been the scene of communal carnage. BCCI felt I was adopting a tit-for-tat approach over Karachi which was not the case. I had wanted to avoid the slightest incident that could mar the friendly atmosphere of the tour. BCCI backed by the Indian government were insistent on keeping Ahmedabad in the schedule. I discussed the matter frankly with my Cambridge friend, Foreign Minister Natwar Singh, and parliamentarian Rajiv Shukla. The issue was amicably resolved with Ahmedabad being retained for an extra ODI. During the tour Indian crowds were welcoming and appreciated good cricket but the main difference was that since most of the ODIs were held in far-flung cities, there was no invasion of Pakistani fans to places like Vishakhapatnam, Jamshedpur or Ahmedabad. Mohali, across the border hosted a Test but not an ODI. For Pakistanis the nearest ODI venue was New Delhi where about 2000 fans joined President Musharraf to witness the match. The New Delhi fixture led to informal meetings between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, enhancing the improved bilateral climate between the two countries.
Another diplomatic issue arose when the Indian press announced that the Dalai Lama would personally ‘bless’ the teams when they played their side match in Dharamshala, which was his adopted home. I immediately sent off a message to Dalmiya that the Dalai Lama’s presence at the match would be viewed askance by our Chinese friends and that the Pakistani team would refuse to be blessed by the Buddhist figurehead. BCCI had obviously not considered the diplomatic repercussions of the Dalai Lama’s presence at the match and I was soon assured that he would not attend the fixture.
The 2005 tour saw Pakistan escape with a back to the wall defence in the Mohali Test. They lost the Kolkata Test but squared the series with a famous win at Bangalore. In the ODIs, Pakistan lost the first two matches but roared back by winning the remaining four matches to win the series. Under the expert stewardship of Bob Woolmer, Pakistan were a more compact and united team with a fighting spirit. Squaring the Tests and winning the ODIs without the services of Shoaib Akhtar, the perennially injured Rawalpindi Express, was seen as a cricketing success for Bob Woolmer’s team, maturely captained by Inzamam-ul-Haq.
India’s tour of Pakistan in January-February 2006 did not produce the excitement and novelty of the previous visit. All the arrangements fell into place easily – the logistics, visas, tickets, security and hospitality. There was also a sense of déjà-vu about the series which was, nevertheless, eagerly anticipated. However, a significant change had taken place in the BCCI as Jagmohan Dalmiya had lost the election to the presidency to Sharad Pawar – the powerful politician from Pune. Consequently there was a sea-change in India’s cricketing outlook, including a fresh look at the Indian team’s tour of Pakistan.
Pakistan-India cricketing ties were important, so I took an early plane to Mumbai to meet Sharad Pawar and his panel to pick up the thread of Pak-India cooperation in the cricket field. I found Sharad Pawar a highly accomplished administrator, a man of vision and a thorough gentleman. My friend Raj Singh Dungarpur – one of his supporting panel – and Nusli Wadia were close to Sharad Pawar and helped me in establishing warm personal ties with him and his family. When they took over the reins of the Indian Cricket Board, Sharad Pawar’s panel appeared determined to take the opposite road to that Dalmiya had travelled on but I found Sharad Pawar overriding the more radical policies of his colleagues.
The new panel members were enthusiastic about the India tour to Pakistan but raised again the issue of Karachi, even though Karachi violence had shown a downward graph and was limited to Shia-Sunni skirmishes. I quoted to the new Indian panel the praise by the Indian captain, manager and the team during the previous tour and the manager’s public statement that next time the Indian team would play a Test in Karachi. I mentioned the serious political ramifications if the next Indian team declined to play in Karachi, especially as in 2004 Karachi had been in the forefront of giving the Indian team a bear-hug of a welcome, banishing all the security ghosts from its shores. ‘Ask your stars how they were welcomed in Karachi. And ask Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi,’ I said. The Karachi objection was soon dropped and India agreed not only to an ODI but a Test Match in Kar
achi. The city’s superb conduct during the 2004 ODI had been rewarded and Karachi allotted a Test with a major cricketing nation.
This time the Test Matches were played first but unfortunately the dull, low-bounce pitches at Lahore and Faisalabad produced the most boring and turgid cricket imaginable. This was not intentional or a deliberate going back to the defensive, non-losing gambits of the early encounters. Against orders, the wickets at Faisalabad and Lahore turned out to be graveyards for bowlers. In fact I had given written instructions to our chief curator to prepare ‘bouncy and fast’ wickets. His excuse was that the heavy rains and an unusually cold winter had prevented the ‘baking’ of the wickets.
The third Test in Karachi, however, made up for the monotony of the earlier Tests. It was a humdinger, a see-saw battle that saw Pakistan’s first three wickets go down for no runs, giving Irfan Pathan a rare first over hat-trick. Pakistan fell to 37 for 6 but a fighting rearguard saw them to 236. Then on a fine bouncy wicket, Mohammad Asif announced himself as an outstanding prospect by bowling India out for a low score. Pakistan won the Test handsomely after a huge second innings score. After a long break Pakistan had won a Test series against India – another feather in the cap for Bob Woolmer and Inzamam-ul-Haq.
The one-day series saw a turnaround in fortunes – India winning the series comfortably 4 games to 1 – so that honours were even and everyone went home happy at the positive public relations fall-out from the three series that had taken place without a single incident and with both rival teams playing hard but in the best sporting tradition of the game.
Pakistan-India tension had, over the decades, seen bilateral cricket series placed on hold for long periods. It required a carefully constructed diplomatic manoeuvre during the 2004 SAARC Summit to revive bilateral cricketing contests. A huge responsibility then fell on the two boards, their teams and the cricketing public to ensure that bilateral relations in the political field should not be damaged by cricketing acrimony and crowd disturbance.
This objective was more than achieved by the ground-breaking series of 2004 and continued in the subsequent series in India and Pakistan. Cricket became the vehicle which gave vent to spontaneous public goodwill on both sides of the border. A new benchmark in public relations was achieved. Now the cricketing tail was beginning to wag the political dog. Cricket was acting as a bridge of peace pressurizing the two governments to match the goodwill at the political level.
Creating this ambience required meticulous preparation and sensitive negotiations at several levels. Hotels, airline travel, security and transport for the team and ICC officials had to be perfect. The PCB received over 250 requests by Indian media for formal registration. This number exceeded by over ten times the previous number of media requests. Separate media boxes had to be constructed, accommodation found and computer connections finalized for this highly sensitive group of media representatives. Ticket holders from far and wide who had bought tickets on the internet, had to be assured of their seats in the stands – seats that were often taken over in the past by police and security hangers-on. The tour schedules, venues that were potentially volatile like Karachi and Ahmedabad and personalities like the Dalai Lama needed to be diplomatically and sensitively negotiated. Above all, the teams and fans had to be briefed appropriately to measure up to national expectations. The Pakistani public, which for decades had been brainwashed by false perceptions, intolerance, xenophobia and extremism, was put on trial. The public needed to reverse these perceptions and show Pakistan’s real face as a welcoming, sporting and tolerant society.
The response to this challenge was amazing. Perhaps one small incident encapsulated the entire syndrome of the friendship series. At Lahore, Inzamam was batting and played a ball to point where Kumble fielded and flung the ball hard towards the keeper, except that the throw was a little off the mark and missed Inzamam’s nose by a whisker. Inzamam turned angrily towards Kumble and heated words were exchanged between the two stalwarts. The incident sent a chill down my spine as I felt all the goodwill and bonhomie between the teams could be affected by an ugly incident. Of course the TV cameras had caught the heated exchange and millions of viewers wondered if the incident would lead to further tension. Play continued but at the close, Inzamam and Kumble walked back smiling arm-in-arm, the heated exchange forgiven and forgotten. This was the response of two mature and responsible cricketers who knew that, like a drop of ink discolouring a whole glass of water, one ugly incident transmitted to the spectators and to millions of television watchers could drain away the goodwill that had been achieved in the entire series.
India and Pakistan Working Together
After India’s tour of Pakistan, another challenge had to be faced – the holding of the 2011 World Cup in South Asia. This time the challenge did not relate to Indo-Pakistan rivalry but found India and Pakistan, supported by Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, on the same side confronting a serious challenge from Australia and New Zealand. The 2007 World Cup was to take place in the West Indies. South Africa (2003) and England (1999) had hosted the two previous World Cups. South Asia (1996) and Australia and New Zealand (1992) had earlier completed the geographic round robin. Somewhere down the line, Dalmiya had pleaded that India, which carried the biggest financial clout in the cricket world, should host every third World Cup. A tacit acceptance of Dalmiya’s proposal, supported by his friend the Australian Bob Merriman, was agreed at one of the ICC Executive Board Meetings. After December 2005 Jagmohan Dalmiya was replaced by Sharad Pawar as President of BCCI. A few months later, Bob Meriman was succeeded by Craigh O’Connor as president of the Australian Board, so that the ICC had from early 2006 seen a sea-change in its two most influential countries.
Though a serving general in the Pakistan army, my predecessor as chairman of the PCB, General Tauquir Zia, had maintained an equable relationship with BCCI throughout the period when bilateral tension was high over Kargil and other issues. When I took over, I felt it was in Pakistan’s cricketing interest to maintain friendly, cordial ties with BCCI, regardless of the undulating political relationship between the two countries. I had developed warm ties with Jagmohan Dalmiya ever since 1999 when he courageously took the decision to empty the Eden Gardens stadium to complete a Test Match that Pakistan eventually won. Now that Sharad Pawar had defeated Dalmiya in a bitterly fought election, it was important that PCB’s cordial relations with BCCI should be maintained. I therefore flew out to Mumbai to congratulate Sharad Pawar and, as stated earlier, managed to establish a warm personal relationship with the powerful federal minister, who is known as the king of Maharashtra and was now also king of cricket in India.
I noticed in Mumbai that the ring of radical supporters which had led to Sharad Pawar defeating Dalmiya were advising him to undo the decisions that had been taken during Dalmiya’s tenure. I had seen this happen in Pakistan when the fierce rivals for power, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, alternated as prime minister. Nearly always the succeeding prime minister countermanded the decisions taken by the predecessor even if they were good ones taken in the national interest. Sharad Pawar’s team decided to cancel the Afro-Asia Cup even though two legs of the three-legged series were yet to be held. The Pakistan tour was confirmed but serious doubts raised again about Karachi security. Sharad Pawar was also being urged to have his two-year rotating tenure as chairman of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) extended by at least a year as Dalmiya had already served for a year and a half, leaving Sharad Pawar only six months in office.
With deference to Sharad Pawar’s stature as a leading politician, I politely requested him at our bilateral meeting not to take any hasty and unilateral decision on cricketing issues that affected all four Asian countries. The Afro-Asian Cup had been a cricketing failure, with hardly any spectators for the Asia vs Africa matches, but Dalmiya’s rationale for dreaming up the fatuous series was to make money through television rights for the cash-strapped African boards. They would then be more inclined to show solidarity with India over cricketing
issues at the ICC. I knew that the Africans – South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, a leading associate – would feel aggrieved at the cancellation of the Afro-Asian Cup. I, therefore, pleaded caution and consultation with other Asian stakeholders.
A few weeks later, in January 2006, the four Asian representatives gathered in New Delhi to finalize our joint bid for the 2011 World Cup. The last date for the bids was a few days after our New Delhi meeting and the final decision was to be taken at ICC headquarters in Dubai a week later. To my horror, the BCCI had not completed its preparations for our joint bid which entailed filling detailed and copious forms that ICC had sent out to all the countries bidding for the World Cup. There was consternation in the ranks when we – Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan – pointed out that our joint bid was bound to hit the rocks because India had not remotely completed the data required by the ICC. Sharad Pawar was naturally deeply upset to learn of this potential disaster and ordered his secretary Niranjan Shah to sit up all night with his South Asian colleagues to complete the data.
Next morning I saw a bleary-eyed Salim Altaf, my chief executive, at breakfast. I enquired from him the results of the night vigil. He replied, ‘I’m afraid the task could not be completed. We sat up with Niranjan Shah till 3 a.m. but then the effort collapsed because the Indian Board simply did not have the factual data at hand. I am afraid our bid will be found non-compliant in Dubai.’
This was a serious blow and was certain to affect Asia’s prestige in the cricket world individually and collectively, especially as we had confidently expected the 2011 World Cup to fall into our lap. India’s non-compliance was, in my opinion, due to the fact that the BCCI had no permanent headquarters, no secretariat and no paid officials performing BCCI’s daily work. This was a strange omission because every country had a cricketing headquarters with executives, secretaries, clerks, staff cars, telephones and a postal address. For the most powerful cricketing nation in the world not to have this basic structure seemed bizarre. Within weeks of taking over, Sharad Pawar recognized this gaping hole in the system and ordered the building of BCCI headquarters in Mumbai. Within a year the office was up and running. India’s tardy response to fulfilling ICC conditions for the World Cup was mainly due to the absence of headquarters and staff.
Shadows Across the Playing Field Page 15