ELECTIONS '98
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Yeh dil mange no more

The most eagerly awaited cricket series played in India has just come to an end, with the honours being unevenly shared. The Test series was just about drawn by India, while the inaugural Asia Cup and the Pepsi one-day series both resulted in a conclusive rout of the much-vaunted Indian XI. As the teams head for Sharjah, and thence to England for the last World Cup of this millennium, there can't be a single Indian willing to put his money on his country, much as he would like to.

The series itself was a controversial one, with passions running high and the Shiv Sena upping the ante before some deft deliberations by Home Minister L K Advani thwarted that threat. Cricket for Peace suddenly became the war-cry, as both the secularists and the Hindu nationalists sunk their differences, in the obvious hope that cricketing ties will usher in a new era of friendship and understanding between the two neighbours.

That hope has, to an extent, been realised, with Prime Minister A B Vajpayee riding across the Radcliffe line in a bus.

I have always held that cricket, or sporting and other ties, should succeed and not precede normalisation in the political sphere, that there was no point in pretending things were normal as long as Pakistan continued, overtly or covertly, to work against the Indian State. Neither the bus ride, nor the cricket cricket series, has in anyway altered that viewpoint. Neither the terrifying sight of Shoaib Akthar in Bangalore, nor of a dejected Sachin Tendulkar in Calcutta, or the unprecedented victory lap in Chennai, has done little to change my basic belief that nothing can be achieved by 11 men while the men in white, in New Delhi and Islamabad, do not get down to brass-tacks.

At the same time, I also believe that once the Government of India has cleared the cricket series, there was no point in resorting to undemocratic means of protest, as the Shiv Sena did, to oppose the tour. Much as I find myself on the same side as the Sena over relations with Pakistan, I differ in the means being adopted to register that protest. There is nothing to be gained in going around, slapping assorted officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India who have nothing whatsoever to do with the decision per se. As the goons who lunged into them, these officials were also merely obeying orders.

Now that the series is over, my opposition to the resumption of cricketing ties between the two nations has only been reinforced. Apart from all the other lofty reasons advanced earlier, of national interest et al, I now also believe that the Indian cricket board, and the government which was almost certainly briefed by the former, erred in allowing Pakistan to play India at this particular point of time, on the eve of the World Cup.

There cannot possibly be an Indian alive who doesn't believe that the Indian XI, with the exception of one player, loses its collective balls when playing Pakistan, either at home, over there, or anywhere else. There may have been exceptions like the Sahara Cup tournament a couple of years ago, but the unstated law is that India is lambs to the slaughter before Pakistan.

This fact must have weighed rather heavily on the Pakistani cricket board's mind when it sought this away-from-home series against India. Before playing India, the Pakis were in a disarray. They had had a dismal season, being licked even by Zimbabwe at home, apart from other teams who made mincemeat of their reputation. Charges of bribery had tainted its cricketing icons, and the splintered team itself was nothing like the wermacht it was reputed to be. I can just imagine, the doc must have taken one look at the team, and considered the looming World Cup, and said, 'Allah be praised, what this team needs is a morale injection, of the kind available only when playing Hindustan.'

For India too, the offer must have seemed irresistible. After all, we are considered lions at home, even if mice abroad, and how can any team hope to rewrite history when we have Abhimanyu-reincarnate in the Eleven who has demolished Shane Warne et al? Yes, our record against Pakistan is a little dismal, but with Sachin Tendulkar on the rampage history was surely about to be rewritten.

But as always with India playing Pakistan, the imponderables -- of Sachin sitting out thanks to an excruciating back -- were not given due weightage. With the result that 11 Indians were playing one Pakistani team. There were individual performances galore, both with the ball and the bat, but the glue needed to weld the team together, was nowhere in sight. The captain was found lacking, the team desultory, and the outcome is that Pakistan have served notice on the World Cup while India will be lucky to qualify for the Super Six, where they are sure to run into the resurgent Pakistan.

Onwards to the next phase of the subcontinental confrontation in Sharjah, where the one perennial sight that refuses to disappear is Javed Miandad's last-ball sixer. Shorn of Tendulkar, can the Indians withstand playing Pakistan amid the partisan crowd?

Is this what the team needs on the eve of the World Cup, something that every fan was hopeful will be brought back to the country after 16 years?

Am I overreacting to a comprehensive rout in "all departments of the game" as Ajay Jadeja put it? Check out what Majid Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, had to say about the just-concluded cricket series:

"The timid Indian approach while playing Pakistan has done wonders to our team's confidence. There is a certain spring in our strides whenever we play India. We must thank the Indians for being such magnanimous hosts.

"You have good individual skills. There are four-five batsmen in the side with a 40-plus average in One Day Internationals, but why don't they play their normal game against Pakistan? For God sake, don't put so much pressure on Sachin Tendulkar.''

And check out Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan's comments during the Bangalore match: "In Indian culture the guest is like god..."

I rest my case.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy