At a time when sports and sportsmen are given unprecedented status and stature, Shaharyar says cricket, the most popular sport in South Asia, has the potential to engage bitter rivals on a friendly platform, where chivalry can take the place of bitterness.It was when he toured with the Pakistan team to India in 1998-99 as their team manager that Khan, who was earlier Pakistan’s foreign secretary from 1990 to 1994, first realised the peacemaking potential of the game.
The book mainly comprises notes compiled in his diary during that eventful tour. It also encompasses the Pakistan debacle in the 2003 World Cup in South Africa. Having played cricket himself in his youth—he played regularly for Cambridge University and for MCC—and then managing one of the game’s best teams at the time, Khan’s personal impressions carry considerable weight. Besides, as a trained diplomat from Pakistan’s foreign affairs ministry, he is able to combine his deep knowledge of the core issues that have kept the two nations hostile to each other with the idea that a shared passion for cricket could possibly bring the two nations together.
The book, written long before he became the head of the PCB, reflects Shaharyar’s deep understanding of the game. And also his penchant for making his charges look beyond cricket, by taking them on sightseeing tours in India and South Africa and interacting with a cross-section of society, especially the underprivileged people.
Giving examples, Shaharyar points out how he was overwhelmed to see cricket help achieve racial and communal harmony in pursuit of Nelson Mandela’s vision of a rainbow nation in South Africa.
His stream of thought starts at the end of the Chennai Test in the 1999 series. After an interesting, intense struggle, Pakistan came out triumphant over India by the thinnest margin (for Test matches) of 12 runs. However, contrary to what one might have expected, the crowd, instead of heading home, stayed in the ground for over an hour and cheered the winning Pakistani team as they took a lap of honour. "Our visit to India was a huge revelation," he writes. "I was able to see at first hand the attitude of India’s public towards ‘the enemy’."
The book also provides for very interesting reading other than the message of hope and peace. It will thrill the cricket enthusiast, providing behind-the-scenes information and immaculate details regarding the planning processes and rationale behind the modus operandi of the Pakistan cricket team during the tours he managed.
At 71, the writer seems to have shed none of his passion for life in general and for cricket in particular. He points to the game’s fanatic following in the whole South Asian region, especially in the subcontinent, where all communities, even warring factions, will get together in support of their respective 11-member teams, taking their triumphs and failures to be their own.
Since becoming chairman, Shaharyar has stressed the need to enhance cricketing ties with India in a bid to further the interaction between the two countries. Though both Pakistan and India have been known for their supremacy in hockey and other sports over the years, it’s cricket that not only binds the nations internally, but in a way, the Asian continent as a whole.
As PCB chairman, Shaharyar had the chance to turn the dream of projecting cricket as a catalyst for peace and India’s 2004 visit to Pakistan must have been a very satisfying experience for him and every peace-loving citizen of the subcontinent. It turned out to be a watershed rubber in terms of its enormous contribution in improving even the non-cricketing environment between the two countries.
Shaharyar says, "The tour provided a memorable boost to bilateral relations and went a long way towards projecting Pakistan as a peaceful, moderate and progressive society." As the Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, Shivshankar Menon, remarked, 20,000 Indian fans had gone back to India acting as Pakistan’s ambassadors. And that "despite my anxiety at the beginning of the tour, cricket had acted as a genuine bridge of peace."
That the Indian press was voicing their cricketers’ desire for Pakistani players to receive the same sort of hospitable welcome in their homeland is proof positive that the writer’s thesis of cricket acting as a catalyst for peace is indeed correct.
(Agha Akbar is sports editor of The Dawn, Pakistan.)
