Shadows Across the Playing Field

Shaharyar Khan, Shashi Tharoor

Description

Shadows across the Playing Field tells the story of the turbulent cricketing relations between India and Pakistan through the eyes of two men - Shashi Tharoor and Shaharyar Khan - who bring to the task not only great love for the game, but also deep knowledge of subcontinental politics and diplomacy. Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and man of letters, is a passionate outsider, whose comprehensive, entertaining and hard-hitting analysis of sixty years of cricketing history displays a Nehruvian commitment to secular values, which rejects sectarianism in sports in either country. Shaharyar Khan, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, is very much the insider, who writes compellingly of his pivotal role as team manager and then chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board at a time when cricket was in the forefront of detente between the two countries. In their essays, the two authors trace the growing popularization of cricket from the days of the Bombay Pentangular to the Indian Premier League. They show how politics and cricket became intertwined and assess the impact it has had on the game. But above all, their book is a celebration of the talent of the many great cricketers who have captivated audiences on both sides of the border. If politics and terrorism can at times stop play, the authors believe that cricket is also a force for peace and they look forward to more normal times and more healthy competition.

Sujets

• Sport
• Autour du sport
• Histoire du sport
• Cricket
• Bowling
• India
• Sachin
• Pakistan
• History
• Government
• Recreation
• Críquet
• Sports

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 04 juin 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788174369499
• Langue: English

Extrait

cross-border talks
SHADOWS ACROSS THE PLAYING FIELD
60 YEARS OF INDIA-PAKISTAN CRICKET
SHASHI THAROOR SHAHARYAR KHAN
SERIES EDITOR
DAVID PAGE
Lotus Collection
Shashi Tharoor and Shaharyar Khan, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
This edition published in June 2009
Second impression August 2009
The Lotus Collection
An imprint of
Roli Books Pvt. Ltd.
M-75, G.K. II Market, New Delhi 110 048
Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000
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Cover Design: Supriya Saran
Layout: Nabanita Das
Scorecards: James Alter
ISBN: 978-81-7436-718-1
Typeset in AGaramond by Roli Books Pvt. Ltd.
and printed at Saurabh Printers, Okhla.
OTHER CROSS-BORDER TALKS TITLES:
Dr Humayun Khan and G. Parthasarathy
Diplomatic Divide
Meghnad Desai and Aitzaz Ahsan
Divided by Democracy
Gyanendra Pandey and Yunas Samad
Fault Lines of Nationhoo d
Kuldip Nayar and Asif Noorani
Tales of Two Cities
OTHER LOTUS TITLES:

Ajit Bhattarcharjea
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah: Tragic Hero of Kashmir
Anil Dharker
Icons: Men Women Who Shaped Today s India
Aitzaz Ahsan
The Indus Saga: The Making of Pakistan
Alam Srinivas TR Vivek
IPL: The Inside Story
Amir Mir
The True Face of Jehadis: Inside Pakistan s Terror Networks
Ashok Mitra
The Starkness of It
H.L.O. Garrett
The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar
M.J. Akbar
India: The Siege Within
M.J. Akbar
Kashmir: Behind the Vale
M.J. Akbar
The Shade of Swords
M.J. Akbar
Byline
M.J. Akbar
Blood Brothers: A Family Saga
Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo
Param Vir: Our Heroes in Battle
Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo
The Sinking of INS Khukri: What Happened in 1971
Madhu Trehan
Tehelka as Metaphor
Mushirul Hasan
India Partitioned. 2 Vols
Mushirul Hasan
John Company to the Republic
Mushirul Hasan
Knowledge, Power and Politics
Nayantara Sahgal (ed.)
Before Freedom: Nehru s Letters to His Sister
Nilima Lambah
A Life Across Three Continents
Sharmishta Gooptu and Boria Majumdar (eds)
Revisiting 1857: Myth, Memory, History
Shashi Joshi
The Last Durbar
Shrabani Basu
Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan
Shyam Bhatia
Goodbye Shahzadi: A Political Biography
FORTHCOMING LOTUS TITLES:

M.B. Naqvi
Pakistan on Knife s Edge
Amir Mir
Fluttering Flag of Jehad
contents
introduction david page
fantasies and realities shashi tharoor
rivalry and diplomacy shaharyar khan
acknowledgements
scorecards
index
The disagreements between Hindus and Muslims before 1947, and between India and Pakistan since, have thrown a long shadow across the playing fields of the world.
- Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field
introduction
i n 1987, I arrived by chance at Lahore airport at more or less the same time as Imran Khan and his teammates, who had just won their first Test series against India, followed by a 5-1 victory in the one-day internationals. Proceeding from the airport to Faletti s hotel took a very long time as the taxi got caught up in a sea of supporters in exultant mood waving flags and cheering their heroes. I particularly remember seeing a phalanx of scooters, six or seven abreast, each with three or four young men on board, each sporting welcoming banners, on one of which was written the memorable slogan: Imran Khan Faateh-i-Hind (Conqueror of India). It was more a reception for a Mughal emperor than for a cricket team captain.
The German military theorist, von Clausewitz, famously wrote that war is merely the continuation of politics by other means . For much of the last sixty years the same might also be said of the cricketing rivalry between India and Pakistan. Cricket has pride of place in the sporting calendars of both countries and no fixture is awaited with more anticipation than Tests or one-day internationals (ODIs) between them. In all cricket-playing countries, national teams carry the hopes and aspirations of millions of supporters but Indian and Pakistani teams often seem to be engaged more in a proxy war than a sporting encounter. An Indian journalist who visited both teams before their World Cup fixture in South Africa in 2003 was told by one cricketer that the mood in the respective dressing rooms was akin to soldiers in a bunker, both sides desperate to emerge victorious in the end . 1
Ramachandra Guha in his classic history of cricket in India A Corner of a Foreign Field has brilliantly shown how the game has been closely entwined with politics from the very beginning. 2 In nineteenth century Bombay, the Parsis and Hindus fought for their own space on the maidan in a challenge to the dominant European gymkhana which mirrored the stirrings of Indian nationalism. In the early twentieth century, the Parsi and Hindu gymkhanas were joined by a Muslim gymkhana - the Muslims taking to cricket, as they took to politics, more tardily than others - and the ground was laid for the famous Quadrangular and Pentagular tournaments between communal teams which brought life in Bombay to a standstill every year in the month of November.
From the late 1930s, the Indian National Congress tried to stop the Bombay Pentangular, arguing that such communal contests played into the hands of the British and their divide and rule policy. But the cricketers and their public only acquiesced under pressure. In the early 1940s, the communal matches continued to pull in massive crowds and the heroes of the different teams - men such as C.K.Nayudu for the Hindus and Major Wazir Ali for the Muslims - received a kind of adulation which was all the more intense because of its political resonance. The final of the 1944 Pentangular, in which the Muslims beat the Hindus, with one wicket to spare, was described at the time as by far the most exciting finish ever . With the Muslim League demand for Pakistan gaining momentum, it was also seen as highly symbolic.
Independence and Partition killed off the Pentangular, which was superseded in India by zonal competitions like the Ranji Trophy, in which teams are selected by geography and not by caste or community. By and large these have been less intense contests, in which sport rather than politics is in the ascendant. After 1947, it has been the cricketing encounters between India and Pakistan which have carried the political intensity of the Pentangular, even if their pedigree is questioned and the criteria for team selection very different.
Since 1947, cricketing relations between the two countries have been as turbulent and unpredictable as their political relations. In times of hostility and war, there have been long periods without matches. Even when the teams have met in more peaceful times, the atmosphere has often been surcharged with nationalist, if not chauvinist, feeling. Yet the passion for cricket on both sides of the border, like the passion for Bollywood, transcends these divisions. In the difficult times it has acted as a common bond, a source of hope and a means of breaking down barriers of mistrust. Cricket has not only given rise to proxy wars; it has also been an arm of diplomacy on both sides of the border.
This volume tells the story of cricketing relations between India and Pakistan through the eyes of two men who bring to the task not only a great love of the game but also a deep knowledge of their political and diplomatic relations.
Shaharyar Khan is a scion of the princely house of Bhopal, who after studying at Cambridge University served Pakistan as a diplomat for more than thirty years. He was ambassador to Amman, London and Paris before becoming foreign secretary of Pakistan in the early 1990s. After his retirement, Shaharyar Khan s diplomatic skills were put to the service of his first love - cricket. He acted as Pakistan s team manager on its highly successful tour of India in 1999 and as the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Control Board between 2003 and 2006. These were times when cricket was in the vanguard of diplomacy between the two countries and Shaharyar Khan s account of those years provides a privileged insight into efforts to build bridges between governments and peoples.
Shashi Tharoor worked for the United Nations for nearly thirty years. He acted as under-secretary-general during the tenure of Kofi Annan and was the runner-up in the election to replace him in 2006. He is also an acclaimed novelist, author and newspaper columnist, who has written extensively on Indian statecraft and foreign policy and is widely read across several continents and in many languages. What is less well known is that he has a passion for cricket, which he has nourished since his schooldays, and follows the fortunes of the Indian team with a keen interest and a discriminating eye. During the Indian tour of England in 2007 I listened with rapt attention to his appearance as a guest on the BBC s Test Match Special as he elaborated on the personalities and performances of the key players and on the role of cricket in Indian life. It was not long afterwards that he kindly agreed to contribute to this volume.
The two essays are very different in character, though they cover much of the same ground. Shashi Tharoor s essay is that of a passionate outsider, who has spent much of his life in non-cricket playing countries like the US, his enthusiasm sharpened by the keen edge of deprivation . Shaharyar Khan, on the other hand, is very much the insider, who has not only played the game himself but also exercised an influence in the counsels of cricket both at home and internationally. Shashi Tharoor s essay is more encyclopaedic: there is scarcely a match he neglects to cover, even those which were played in secondary venues such as Sharjah and Toronto. Shaharyar Khan concentrates mostly on the Test series and ODIs because he thinks th