‘Terrorism Cannot be Tolerated’

If cricket is often the weather vane of Indo-Pak relations, then the forecast is as bleak as it gets. And Sourav Ganguly, former India captain, believes that it is can be other way—because the only apt response to what happened in Pahalgam where 26 tourists were killed in cold blood is snapping of all cricketing ties.

Asked by the media at an interaction, he said that he was 100 percent for discontinuing cricket with Pakistan. He added, ‘It is necessary to take strict action. Every year something like this happens. Terrorism cannot be tolerated.’ Earlier the Board of Control for Cricket in  India (BCCI) too had said that it would no longer have bilateral cricket with Pakistan.

The fallout of the attack has not impacted the Indian Premier League much because Pakistan players are anyway not a part of it and that too had to do with another terrorist attack. The IPL had its first edition in 2008 and later that year the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, which had its origin in Pakistan,  happened. The BCCI decided to keep Pakistani players away from the league, something that has continued to this day.

Cricket as a corollary to Indo-Pak relations in fact had its genesis much earlier. India had two wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 and most of those decades the teams did not play each other. Even when they played later it was at neutral venues. But whenever the geopolitical environment improves, it is touted as an instrument to build peace but only until the next attack emanating from Pakistan. And so, it was that, in 1999, timed to  a visit by prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to Lahore, the Pakistan cricket team did a tour of India. And then a few months later Pakistan infiltrated its troops and started the Kargil war. It took four years for cricketing relations to resume but then in 2008 the sheer scale of the Mumbai terror attacks again led to a break.

BCCI saying bilateral cricket would not take place does not mean much because we haven’t played bilateral cricket since 2013. However, there have been face-offs between the two teams in  multilateral tournaments, like the ICC World Cups. A total snapping of ties would mean that would also be shut down.

 

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