Cricket casts dark shadow on worsening India-Pakistan ties (Feature)

By Nadeem Sarwar Jan 22, 2010, 6:18 GMT

Islamabad - Cricket has traditionally brought closer hundreds of millions of hearts in South Asian rivals India and Pakistan and even averted a war in the subcontinent in the mid-1980s, but the game is now putting a further strain on those ties.

Angry fans this week burned effigies of Indian officials in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore to protest Pakistani players being snubbed by Indian Premier League (IPL) while Pakistan's parliament called off a scheduled visit of its members to New Delhi.

'Many Pakistanis are taking it as an insult for the nation that their cricket heroes were denied access to the IPL,' said Rasool Bux Raees, a political scientist at the prestigious Lahore University of Management Science.

'And the angry national mood here will dent efforts to develop stronger cultural and diplomatic contact between India and Pakistan,' he added.

None of the eight teams that compete in the Twenty20 IPL bid for any of the 11 Pakistani players in an auction Tuesday, mainly because of threats from Hindu militant groups like Navnirman Sena and Shiv Sena to disrupt matches if Pakistani players were included.

The two groups are known for their extremist religious views and occasional atrocities committed against India's Muslim and Christian minorities. They have previously assaulted Pakistani artists performing in India.

Together with the Indian nationalist Bhartia Janta Party, these Hindu groups are pressing the Indian government for a harder stance toward Pakistan following the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, which killed at least 166 people.

The attack, which was blamed on Pakistan-based Islamist terrorists, strained relations between the two neighbours. New Delhi halted a vital peace process with Islamabad. That bitterness continues.

The Times of India reported Thursday that another factor for IPL teams not to go for Pakistani players was that the Indian government refused to give guarantees for visas and other diplomatic clearances for the players.

The Foreign Ministry, however, rejected the report on the same day.

'The participation or absence of Pakistani cricketers in a commercial event of the nature of the IPL is ... a matter not within the purview of the government,' a ministry statement said.

'Blaming the government for the absence of Pakistani players from the next edition of the IPL is unfortunate,' the statement added.

But the explanation might not soothe many in Pakistan, where anger is running high because of what is seen as the humiliation of its national heroes at the hands of the Indians.

The opposition leader in Pakistan's National Assembly, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, demanded a ban on Pakistan's 'sports interaction' with India and a halt to the showing of Bollywood movies.

Pakistan Sports Minister Ijaz Jakhrani urged the nation not to watch IPL matches while the country's Cable Operator Association announced a blackout of the games.

Affected players and other members of the country's Twenty20 world champion team vowed to never again participate in the lucrative IPL, which is followed with great interest in both countries, where cricket has the status of a religion.

'Nothing was more important than my respect and country's honour,' said Sohail Tanveer, all-rounder and leading player in the first IPL season in 2008. He was among the 11 Pakistani players rejected at the auction.

'I think the Indian authorities were not serious to make sure that the Pakistani players are treated in the same way as other international players,' said Imtiaz Alam, an analyst and secretary general of South Asian Free Media Association.

'Actually, there are the bigger players in this game, and these are the military establishments in India and Pakistan, which are less interested in the improvement of relations between the two countries,' Alam said.

He predicted that unless there was a major move to resume the peace process, detrimental developments like the exclusion of Pakistani players from the IPL would continue.