Cricket cooperation

        Just 11 days before the Calcutta inauguration ceremony of the 1996 cricket World Cup – being co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan – a bomb exploded on 31 January in Colombo. Sri Lanka had been looking forward to an event that would be the most significant turning point in its cricketing history. But after the blast, Australia and the West Indies refused to turn up for Sri Lanka's party, and forfeited their league matches.   There was obviously more at stake than the USD 6 million that the Sri Lankans would lose if the matches did not take place. When Australia and the West Indies realised forfeiting one match would not hamper their chances of qualifying for the quarterfinals, there was nothing Sri Lanka could do. They were so desperate to host the match that they offered to arrange practice in India, and to charter special aircraft to bring the teams to Colombo. The sports minister, S B Dissanayake, even offered to stay in the same hotel as the teams to reassure them.   And then, India and Pakistan came together to help out. The PILCOM (Pakistan-India-Lanka Committee), under Jagmohan Dalmiya, stood firmly behind Sri Lanka, and sent a joint India-Pakistan side to play a match in Colombo. "It is a measure of our solidarity with the Sri Lankans; but more than that, it will prove that conditions are conducive to playing in Colombo," Dalmiya said at the time.   "They made more money with that one match than they would have made with those two," J Y Lele, former secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), jokes now. This was neither an isolated act of cooperation nor an accidental one – not the first, not the last. Even though the teams would fight in the future over the spoils of PILCOM and many other
issues, they would appear united. Just like typical brothers – not particularly cordial at home, but ready to join hands to
fight outsiders.   In one voice
Cricket's Southasian unity began in June 1983, when the then-head of the BCCI was refused tickets to the World Cup final held in England, a final India would go on to win. By the time the next World Cup came around, four years later, India and Pakistan joined hands to bid on and organise the event. Just before the games began, the two countries played a friendly cricket-for-peace match. The event itself was a huge financial success, and cricket caught the imagination of Southasians like never before.   This unity has only strengthened since then. In August this year, when Pakistani skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq forfeited the Oval Test against England after umpire Darrell Hair penalised Pakistan for alleged ball-tampering, the BCCI said they did not want Hair to umpire in the Champions Trophy being hosted in India in October and November. When South Africa moved out of a tri-series in Sri Lanka this year, again out of security concerns, India decided to stay on and play a bilateral series. Whenever a Southasian bowler is suspected of an illegal action (Muttiah Muralitharan, Shoaib Akhtar, Harbhajan Singh, et al), it always becomes an issue of Southasian browns versus the white world.   In his book on the 1987 World Cup, English writer Martin Johnson calls cricket a major form of escapism in India and Pakistan, as a poverty-stricken land. Apart from these two countries putting their troubles aside, Johnson had seen Sri Lanka playing in Madras, the separatist violence back home far from memory. It was the attitude of patronisation evident in Johnson's prose towards Southasia that infuriated locals. They decided therefore to create conditions where people came and performed in Southasia. Thus it was that three (and later four) Southasian boards went into International Cricket Council (ICC) meetings as one. "We had a realisation then that almost all the sponsors of the game came from Asia, and we needed to capitalise on that," says Lele.   Dalmiyan economics
Indeed, the money was there, as was a sense of cooperation and angst against white prejudice. The situation called for a leader who would have commercial acumen and political grasp. Jagmohan Dalmiya had both and more. He was not only a master of realpolitik and a genius with money, but he had an uncanny knack and unorthodox means of striking deals. He enriched the BCCI in the late 1980s and early 1990s by capitalising on the opportunities that India's satellite-television boom presented. After making the BCCI the richest cricket board in the world, he became president of the ICC in 1997, and filled up its coffers as well. Dalmiya was the main professor of this experiment in cricket cooperation between Southasian countries. He also became the president of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), which would serve as a forum for all
the Southasian Boards to unite on issues.   If anything can unite more than money, it is the threat of losing that money. The game's old guard hated Dalmiya and his clout, and he eventually had a bitter fallout with the ICC. When it came to selling the broadcasting and marketing rights for the World Cup and other ICC events, a Southasian company was deliberately sidelined. In 2000 Rupert Murdoch's Global Cricket Corporation (GCC) bagged the rights for USD 550 million, even though Zee TV had bid USD 100 million more. The cricket commentator and analyst Harsha Bhogle wrote at the time that it was an obvious move by a power bloc to counter the Southasian administrative offensive.   To protect Murdoch's interests, the ICC included a clause that prohibited players from endorsing products other than those of Murdoch's sponsors during any ICC event. As expected, this now famous ambush-marketing clause hurt the Indian players the most, who were brand ambassadors and models for the variety of products swarming the Indian market. Dalmiya backed the Indian players again, as major stars threatened to boycott international tournaments. The contracts were revised for the time being, and the India team signed them just in time for the ICC Champions Trophy 2002 to start.   The chaos over the marketing of the game continues. Dalmiya has been dethroned in India as well, and BCCI's vice-president Lalit Modi is now looking after the commercial aspects of the game. With the BCCI going aggressive over the Southasia-hosted 2011 World Cup, the international old guard has started hating Modi more than it did Dalmiya. India wants to retain the rights to marketing an event they believe to be their own, while the ICC wants an arrangement similar to the existing one. The race card is also being played again. "The entire structure of the ICC needs an overhaul," Modi has written. "It's time we had a chief executive who comes from Afro-Asia, someone who understands the problems of a majority of ICC members and doesn't heed just the affluent alone."   The colour polarisation
Things have come to such a pass that whenever an issue arises that concerns Asia, the cricketing world ends up being split down the middle. The equation in this situation is simple enough. India has the most to lose in terms of money if the ICC dictates the marketing strategy, and tries to protect the interests of its chosen sponsors. To ensure that this does not happen, India needs political weight in the ICC. In a pure cricketing sense, India may not be a much better team than what it was two decades ago, but as an administrative money-making unit it has emerged as the strongest in the world. This has helped facilitate the unwritten compact between the Southasian boards, where they support each other in the fight against the 'white enemy' – whatever may be the real, unstated interests. Suddenly, India not wanting Hair, or playing matches in Sri Lanka to prove conditions are conducive, starts to make sense.   The white-brown divide is convenient, and gains legitimacy when the same Australian team that refused to play in Sri Lanka goes ahead with its schedule in England after the 7/7 London blasts. But now the racism has taken a new turn, too: with the aggressive, counter-attacking Southasian being seen by some to be engaging in reverse racism. The slightest
of strictness shown against a brown man is seen as the white man's conspiracy.   "Cricket is no more an English game," wrote veteran sports writer Simon Barnes in 1990. "It has been subject to the influences of, to name but a few, Islam, Indian politics, Partition, Tamil separatism … Benazir Bhutto, the question of trade embargo, the question of diplomatic relations, the pleasure of drugs, the morality of liars, the morality of money…"
Many of the accusations of systemic racism ring false. The ICC's headquarters has moved to Dubai from London. Not long ago, its president was a Pakistani, the vice-president a South African, the head of the technical committee an Indian, and the head of the panel of match referees a Sri Lankan. Its 10 permanent members include four Asian countries, two African countries and the West Indies.   Still, the beauty of racism is that Southasians can use the brown colour whenever anything goes against them. Soon, a Britisher would not be too far off the mark if he said cricket is now ruled by Asians only, and serves their purpose alone. "Cricket is not a simple game. It just started off that way," Barnes wrote, with great foresight.