An India-Pakistan ODI in Sialkot was expected to be a contest that lived long in the memory. It did, for all the wrong reasons
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The phone call bore news that India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, had been shot and injured in Delhi. General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's president, had ordered the match be cancelled immediately; Zia's instructions famously came with little room for negotiation and scant tolerance for dissent.
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The lunch break represented as good an opportunity as Qureshi would get to break the news to the teams and call the game off. He went over to the Indian dressing room and took Gavaskar and the team manager, the late Raj Singh Dungarpur, aside. "I remember Gavaskar gasping in complete shock. I did not tell him about President Zia's order, asking him instead what he wished to do. He was emphatic: they would pack up and leave. I told him all the arrangements had been made, and the vehicles were lined up outside, ready to leave for Lahore."
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There was still the small matter of telling the crowd. Qureshi felt that as the man in charge on the day, he had to be the one to break the news. With riot police on high alert, and not knowing what the crowd's reaction might be, he delivered the announcement: Indira Gandhi had been shot, and the game was off.
"To my utter disbelief, people started clapping," says Qureshi. "The crowd melted away, peacefully, out of the stadium. Indira Gandhi was deeply unpopular in Pakistan, but this was a reaction I could never have predicted. I have to say, we were extremely lucky the Indian media had departed before we told the spectators. This coming to light would be the last thing Indo-Pak relations needed at the time."
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Shakoor has the same memory. "It was surreal. Here we were, telling them they wouldn't get to watch Pakistan bat against India, that we were offering them no refund, and that India's prime minister was dead. Yet 25,000 people applauded the news and filtered out onto the street as if nothing of note had happened. I have to say this was quite shameful."
