World Agenda: Sorry, Imran Khan, cricket isn't immune from conflict
We’re in a war. It’s a bloody game of cricket, and we’re in a war. Life shouldn’t be like that.” Thus did Simon Taufel, one of the two Australian umpires in Pakistan during this week’s attacks in Lahore, comment in disbelief on cricket’s new status as a target for terrorists.
Much as Mr Taufel may wish for cricket to be immune from international conflict, he is naive to think that this is so. Even though sport has a long history of political entanglement – the Berlin Olympics, the Munich massacre, the tit-for-tat boycotts of the Olympic Games in Moscow and Los Angeles, the boycott of apartheid South Africa – its fans cling to the notion that because everyone loves it, because it is so thrilling, so unifying, so culturally vital, sport exists inside some sort of protective bubble.
This was most clearly stated by the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan when he criticised India in December for cancelling its tour to Pakistan after the Mumbai terrorist attacks. His argument was that no one would ever dare attack a visiting cricketer because cricket was so loved in Pakistan that the entire nation would turn against the perpetrators. The Indian media has not been slow to remind him of these remarks – it could have been India’s cricketers, not Sri Lanka’s, who got on a bus to the Gaddafi stadium this week.
Cricketers and other sportsmen know instinctively – even if they balk at admitting and articulating it – that they are just as vulnerable as everyone else to extremist violence. In March 2008 the Australians cancelled their tour of Pakistan hours after bombs killed 15 people in Lahore. The idea that as cricketers in a cricket-mad country they had immunity from the bombs and bullets of al-Qaeda was not part of their thinking. They were not alone. The Sri Lankans were the first team to dare to visit Pakistan for 14 months. Now the Pakistan team is even facing a reluctance to let it play abroad: Bangladesh has just called off Pakistan’s upcoming tour.
Post-Lahore, the Indian Premier League – cricket’s big-money event that has given its stars an earning power comparable to the best-paid sportsmen – is panicking at the suggestion by the country’s Home Minister that it may have to reschedule some of its matches. The players, team owners and businessmen involved in the IPL have no idea what will happen if the multimillion-dollar TV rights, sponsorship deals and gate receipts vanish overnight, but they may soon find out. (As for the 2011 World Cup, hosted jointly by the countries of the sub-continent – well, there’s nothing like as much money involved, so that’s much easier to cancel.)
As if to illustrate cricket’s blinkered attitude to the real world, consider the little-noticed announcement this week that India will tour Zimbabwe after New Zealand pulled out of a one-day series there. No terror threat from the Zimbabweans, but what about the economic ruin, the humanitarian disaster, the callous indifference of the Mugabe regime towards its people? England, Australia and New Zealand won’t go, but give India – a fellow Commonwealth country – a gap in the calendar and it is only too happy to oblige. This is before the bloodstains have been washed out of the grass of Lahore’s Liberty roundabout.
Even the argument that sport events hosted by “unsavoury” regimes – the Olympics in China, for example – do more good than harm by letting some light into the dark corners of dictatorships is an acknowledgement that sport is political. The additional justification for allowing sports events to go ahead in places run by despots is that it would be wrong to punish ordinary people with a boycott. But given the right pressure, be it public opinion or economic incentive, sporting or government bodies are quick to forget about ordinary people.
As the flak flies over the Lahore attacks, as the IPL panics, as India frets about terrorist threats to the 2010 Commonwealth Games it is hosting, it is clear that cricket – especially in the fanatical sub-continent – has become enmeshed in the region’s troubles. Imran Khan’s idea of cricket as undefiled and untouchable has been exposed for the fallacy it really is.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/world_agenda/article5856646.ece