- Sunday, September 08, 2024
The Indian cricket board, which has Jay Shah, son of Indian home minister Amit Shah, as a top official, refused to send the national team to Pakistan for the tournament.
By: Shubham Ghosh
WHILE cricket fans are excited over the Asia Cup tournament that kicked off in Multan in Pakistan on August 30, not all is well yet with the high-profile one-day tournament.
Pakistan is the official host to the tournament — the 16th edition — but it is actually organising only four of the 13 matches that will be played till September 17. Sri Lanka is the other co-host which is hosting the remaining nine, including the final.
Even hosting four matches, according to some officials of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), is no less than a miracle given the fact that the challenges that the country faced while hosting the tournament.
The country, which is desperately trying to play host to a major tournament in years since the international cricket community started avoiding it following a terrible terror attack on the national side of Sri Lanka during a tour there in 2009. Pakistan even lost its rights to host the world cup in 2011 which was held in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
But its mission to single-handedly host the latest edition of the Asia Cup hit the wall as the Indian cricket board refused to send its team to Pakistan citing “political tensions” between the two neighbours.
While Pakistan was awarded the hosting rights for the 2023 Asia Cup by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) two years ago, the PCB faced a shock when Jay Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the president of the ACC, announced India’s refusal to send its national team to set foot on the Pakistani soil.
Shah, who is the son of Amit Shah, India’s home minister and the second most powerful man in the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party after prime minister Narendra Modi, wanted the tournament to be played at a “neutral venue”.
Pakistan came up with responses — hot and cold — and eventually it was decided that the tournament will be played in a hybrid format — in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. India will play all their matches in Sri Lanka, including the ones (there will be more than one) against Pakistan in the island-nation.
For some other participating nations, it will be flying between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, located almost 2,800 kilometres apart.
There are viewpoints on both the Indian and Pakistani side that such a result is caused because of India’s strong cricketing clout.
Veteran cricket analyst Sharda Ugra told Al Jazeera that the Indian board’s stance towards Pakistan showed its “small-mindedness” and that Shah’s holding posts in the BCCI and ACC is a conflict of interest.
“The Indian cricket board is hurting Pakistan just because it can. Back in the 90s, Asian nations were a bloc and presented a united front, but things have unfortunately changed now. This is a classic bullying tactic,” Ugra, who is based in Bengaluru, told Al Jazeera.
Saad Shafqat, an analyst and cricket writer from Karachi, Pakistan, believes “Indian hostility” towards Pakistan has resulted in such a situation.
“Their board [often] refuses to play against us in bilateral games. They don’t include our players in the Indian Premier League [IPL],” Shafqat told the news outlet.
“They are only able to do this because they have the biggest cricket market, and they dictate terms on a global level. Nobody wants to cross them.”
The daily also cited an informed source in the PCB saying that it took an “incredible” amount of diplomatic efforts to convince other nations of the ACC that Pakistan could even get a hybrid model with four games played on its turf.
“Considering the influence India holds over the International Cricket Council as well as ACC nations, I cannot imagine any ACC country, apart from ours, being able to stand up to the BCCI. Nobody can afford to antagonise India,” the source at the Pakistani board was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.
It may be mentioned here that the last time that India had gone to Pakistan for playing cricket was in 2008 and it was for the Asia Cup that year.
There was yet another controversy after the tournament started after the Pakistan fans found that the name of their country as the official host was missing from the participating teams’ jerseys. While the PCB tried to reason, saying it was decided by the ACC that the host nation’s name would not be used with the Asia Cup logo in future events, not many were buying it.
In 2022, the teams’ jerseys had carried the name of Sri Lanka even though the tournament was played in the UAE since the island-nation was the original host and the tournament was relocated to the Middle East because of Sri Lanka’s economic turmoil at home.
A former player who didn’t want to be named said Shah was the reason for Pakistan not being acknowledged as the host nation.
“Given the current scenario between the two countries perhaps the BCCI official felt it would be embarrassing for the Indian team players to wear kits with the name of Pakistan on the official Asia Cup logo,” he was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
Bangladesh and Afghanistan are also in the fray in Asia Cup besides India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
