Cover Story: Cricket: Face Off

Billed as the of the decade, the current Test series between India and Pakistan gives both sides the chance to prove that they can compete in a civilised way on a cricket pitch.

There will be a day soon on Indian soil when Indian coach Anshuman Gaekwad and Pakistan coach Javed Miandad come face to face. Perhaps at a party, a press conference, in a hotel lobby. Photographers will record the moment, when they clasp hands, smile, maybe even embrace.

But then what? What will they speak of, what memories do they have to fall back on? So much of the past is unseemly.

Like that day during the Lahore Test in 1984-85. To quote writer Mudar Patherya who was there: "Gaekwad played forward, missed, the ball hit his pad and he was given out caught. When Gaekwad, stunned, took his time to walk back to the pavilion, a Pakistan player asked him to "F... off". Gaekwad turned around. The conversation went a few sentences further. Eventually the umpires had to separate the two." The Pakistani player was Miandad.

Today the same two men collide, now older, greyer. Dear God, wiser too, one hopes. For if they have not brushed away the past, if they haven't unloaded the burden of hostility, if they haven't taught their wards the difference between competition and conflict, we will never move forward.

And so the question persists. Are India and Pakistan ready to play cricket? The game, not the war.

SECURITY
Only Covers No Slips

Despite the Shiv Sena calling off its threat to disrupt the matches, security to be kept at a high level.

Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research & Analysis Wing asked to give advance information on plans of disrupters.

Home Ministry Special Secretary (Internal Security) Nikhil Kumar ordered to run overall security arrangements. Yashovardhan Azad, senior IB officer, will accompany team and liaise with local officials.

Movement of the cricketers to be kept secret, to the extent possible, in line with international norms for high security. Team members advised not to fraternise with the public or accept gifts.

Match venues and the hotels where the teams will reside to have heavy police presence. Entry regulated through metal detectors and random frisking. Substantial presence of plainclothesmen around these places.

Heavy escort for the teams moving to and from the venue. Individual players wanting to go out of the hotel will get special escorts.

Venue of the matches have been specially prepared by erecting high fences in front of the spectators and screening the staff and providing them special ids.

Lower level security will be provided to family members of the cricket team and cricket association officials across the country.

To say that for the first time since 1989-90 these two nations are preparing to resume a rivalry is incorrect. This is no rivalry. When Australia plays England, that is a rivalry. For sure they too lapse on occasion into ugliness but for the most part it is a competition that is cricket. It tests character but, in a way, sport was meant to. The tragedy of India versus Pakistan is that it moves beyond traditional definitions of sport. Tapped telephones, biased umpiring, stone throwing, verbal abuse, "Allah-o-Akbar" from one stand and "Ganapati Bapa Moriya" from another, death threats, physical assaults -- what happens off the field too often mars what happens on it. It is why these two nations which first met in 1952-53 have only played 44 Tests; in the same period England and Australia played each other 138 times.

So like a plaintive wail, repeat the question: are India and Pakistan ready to play cricket?

In drawing rooms, in bars, on the street, in the stands, people rise and bellow, "national pride is at stake'. (Hey mister, I'd like to say, you want to entrust my nation's pride to a bunch of guys who can't field? Forget it.) But seriously, the players must cringe. In Sharjah, Sunil Gavaskar would once say, everyone from the driver to the bellboy to the waiter seemed to have a four-word vocabulary: "You must beat Pakistan". And that's neutral ground (well, geographically speaking). In India, the atmosphere will be combustible. The players, we tend to forget, are here to display what makes them more special with a bat and ball. They are here to win too. But they are not warriors on whose deeds an entire nation must judge itself.

It makes a difference. Sport is as much about risk as it is about playing percentages, it demands as much tactical adventure as it requires caution. But as Bishen Singh Bedi, who toured Pakistan as captain in 1978, says: "It was never so much about winning as it was about not losing." Suddenly the most attacking of men finds a defensive mould. It is no surprise that in 44 Tests there have been 33 draws, for the dressing room mantra must be "Harna nahi (Don't lose)". What a tragic way to play sport.

But hey, we can hope, can't we? We can hope that the idiots will stop digging the pitch, that the men who wish to stoke an old enmity will settle down, that the debates about politics in sport will cease, that everyone will just shut up and let the cricket begin. Rahul Dravid has played 25 Tests, Javagal Srinath 35, Wasim Akram 83, Saeed Anwar 36, and not once, not ever, has there been a Test match morning when Akram has bowled to Dravid, Srinath bowled to Anwar. Imagine what we have missed.

No one plays cricket like we do in India and Pakistan, no one has that gift of feet, that suppleness of wrist, that delicacy of shot. But we poets of the pitch are also gifted in the hating business. Once again, though, an opportunity presents itself, a beginning. To prove that we are grown up and mature enough to compete in a civilised way on a cricket field. That India and Pakistan are ready to play cricket.