ISLAMABAD - Sports often supercedes politics as
a vibrant expression of the best that talented humans
can offer, reflecting a nation's image, strength and
national character. And sometimes, the struggle on the
playing field can excite the worst passions that are
otherwise manifested in combat on the battleground,
escalating divisions and causing cleavages.
Thankfully, the recently concluded cricket
series of one-day matches between Pakistan and the
visitors from India brought out the best that Pakistanis
as a people can offer, while the gripping series was a
test of the teams' spirit, skill and strength.
On March 24, India beat Pakistan in a thrilling
final of the one-day series of five matches between the
two arch rivals played this month. On Sunday, the two
cricketing nations began the first of the three "Test"
matches they will play in Pakistan. Each Test match
lasts for a maximum of five days.
The cricket
series is the first being played out in Pakistan as part
of confidence-building measures after nearly 14 years
when armed militancy in Kashmir first surfaced.
Pakistan went to India for a Test series in 1999
and the two countries have met in venues as such as
Sharjah, but the Indian government has until now held to
its position of not sending its cricket team to a
country it accused of waging a "proxy war" in Kashmir.
So, like any competition between two traditional
rivals India and Pakistan, which have been locked in an
adversarial relationship for the past 57 years, this was
no ordinary clash. It was a test of their maturity to
compete by demonstrating grace in victory, and dignity
in defeat.
Cricket can be a plus to promote a
country's image, as it did in Pakistan's case, since a
cross-section of the Indian elite visiting Pakistan was
bewildered and literally bowled over by the sporting
behavior of the Pakistani people.
The Pakistani
spirit was on display with a warm hospitality and
welcoming spontaneity manifesting the essence of what
is, at the core, the good-natured, large-hearted
Pakistani ethos. Newspaper reports gushed over how
Pakistani taxi drivers turned down cab fares from
visiting Indians, and how Indians, making use of easier
movement between the two countries of late, were able to
visit neighboring Pakistan - many for the first time.
Many thought the idea of a cricket series was a
gamble given recent conflicts and mutual suspicions. But
these cricket matches brought out the best among the
Pakistani people, even though the cricket team lost the
series by a close margin.
That such sports
competitions cut both ways is evident from recent
examples of adversaries giving their best, or their
worst, on the playing field.
In June 1998, when
Iran and the United States were playing a qualifying
match for the Soccer World Cup in the French city of
Lyon - their first sporting engagement since Iran's
Revolution in 1979 - Iran beat the US. But the
International Football Federation gave its Annual Fair
Play Prize to both teams for "showing sportsmanship".
Although the politics of the past permeated the
atmosphere, both sides did not allow it to pollute the
environment.
Similarly, in 1971, "ping pong
diplomacy" between the table tennis teams of China and
the US set the stage for normalization of their
relations under Premier Chou Enlai's immortal slogan of
"Friendship first, competition second".
But
sometimes, sports can also bring out the worst among
players, proving that acrimony and conflict is not the
monopoly of a battlefield alone.
In July 1969,
El Salvador and Honduras even fought a week-long
"football war" with over 2,000 casualties after a
three-match series of matches between the two neighbors
degenerated into a free-for-all, similar to what Europe
regularly witnesses when football hooligans run amok
after soccer matches.
Or take the 1972 Munich
Olympics, where the field hockey final between Pakistan
and West Germany turned sour, with Pakistan's defeat
becoming a near diplomatic disaster. Behaving as sore
losers, 13 of its hockey players were debarred for a
year for misbehavior and Pakistan later apologized to
West Germany for this appalling lack of sportsmanship.
Pakistani opinion was so much swayed by the
apparently partisan tone of its radio commentators that
then leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was even said to be
contemplating a break in relations with Argentina, whose
umpire was alleged to have been a partisan for the
victorious West Germans, until he saw the televised
recording of the match and better sense prevailed.
But politics cannot always be divorced from
sports. Take the case of the world's most celebrated and
undoubtedly popular sportsman, the US's Muhammad Ali,
once the world heavyweight boxing champion.
Since he was deprived of his sporting crown for
political reasons (he became a Muslim and opposed the
Vietnam War refusing to serve in the US Army), his
return with a bang in the famous bout with George
Foreman in Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, in 1974 was
symbolized as the resurgence of the oppressed, something
akin even to the Third World's rise.
Cricket, as
the Pakistan-India series manifested, has certain unique
pluses for Pakistanis. Three are noteworthy. First,
cricket straddles the divisions in Pakistani society,
either on class, ethnic or sectarian lines. Second,
cricket is a major factor for national unity, providing
a sense of participation to all parts of the country.
Not since Pakistan's World Cup triumph in 1992 was the
entire nation so riveted by cricket, as was the case in
the recent series with India. Third, in a country where
merit is almost always subordinate to the
sifarshi culture based on contacts, cricket is
one field where an opportunity for social mobility is
provided based on excellence and performance.
Like any sporting event, there are critics, and,
in this case, even conspiracy theorists, where the
loser's logic prevails. A loss has to be due to a
conspiracy, implying as if the match was fixed, similar
to a losing politician's cribbing where an election
defeat is invariably attributed to rigging.
There is also an element of denial, is if a
defeat is something outside the realm of probability. To
this day, many in Pakistan attribute the 1971 "debacle"
- the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan - to an
international conspiracy, conveniently forgetting
Pakistan's own mistakes accumulated over time that
resulted in the Bengalis' alienation.
Pakistan's
cricket team certainly needs to imbibe lessons starting,
first and foremost, from a killer instinct fired by the
will to win at all costs. This has to be a three-in-one
exercise: combat defeatism, foster determination and
promote discipline.
