As India and Sri Lanka prepare for the big match this afternoon, Pakistan will no doubt contemplate its poignant absence from the festivities and fireworks at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. The reference here is not just to the semi-final defeat of Shahid Afridi’s team in cricket’s Fifty50 World Cup. True, that has evoked a sense of loss and frustration in Pakistan. Yet this tournament has also demonstrated, in several unrelated ways, how far behind that country has fallen even when measured against its neighbours.
Contrary to fears and apprehensions, this has been a successful tournament. Of course, the advance of the popular South Asian teams has helped. However, fears that the age of Twenty20 cricket would diminish the appeal of traditional limited overs’ cricket have also been negated. Commercial valuations have zoomed. Security concerns have been absent. India and Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh — the third host — have celebrated. Pakistan has been the odd man out.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. In 2006, the cricket boards of India and Pakistan had bid together for the 2011 World Cup, bringing in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as co-hosts to give them a stake in what was essentially a bilateral enterprise. Pakistan was supposed to host a fair share of matches. The semi-final played in Mohali was originally planned for Lahore. It would have been a home game for Afridi’s men.
In 2006, the Afghan war was in full swing and Pakistan was a frontline state. Even so it was presumed the conflict would stabilise by now, 10 years after 9/11. By then Islamabad, which seemed to be moderating and modernising — at least its leaders were promising to do so in the early years of the 21st century — would see the World Cup as a motivation, an impetus to get itself in order.
It turned out otherwise. In 2007, there was a surge in suicide bombings within Pakistan. From six such attacks in 2006, the number soared to 56 the following year. In December 2007, about 18 months after the World Cup bid was won, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. In 2008, the Champions Trophy, scheduled to be held in Pakistan, was cancelled. In 2009, the Sri Lankan cricket team faced gunfire on the streets of Lahore. In parallel, sectarian warfare, jihadi assaults and targetted killings of political leaders continued. Finally, Pakistan lost the World Cup as well.
Consider how the past five years have turned out for India and Sri Lanka. India has survived the worst of the global business slowdown and continued to grow robustly. Government policies and a polity that is essentially non-reformist are still holding it back, but the direction is unmistakable. Indian business has grown rapidly and expanded its geographical footprint.
If he looked around and sent his scouts to visit the air-conditioned boxes in the Mohali stadium, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani would have got a sense of the new India. Some of the world’s richest men, wealth-creators and job-creators of renown, were packed into those boxes, cheering their team. So were movie stars and cultural icons who have built India’s soft power reserves. Chandigarh airport was overburdened with requests from private planes and corporate jets.
Tacky and over-the-top as India’s new-found ostentation may be, it is nevertheless undeniable. It is also an indication of the distance between India and Pakistan. Even in the late-1990s, the Pakistani elite lived and dressed and ‘looked’ richer than its Indian counterpart. Today, this would be a no contest.
The phenomenon runs deeper. A decade of high GDP growth rates has revolutionised the Indian middle classes and their attitudes. It has transformed priorities from issues of history and identity and embittered victimhood. Cricket has been a beneficiary of this rise of middle India — whether in the form of a sponsor and advertiser rush to the World Cup or, to cite another example, inventing the Indian Premier League and making it one of sport’s most successful start-up ventures ever.
How has Sri Lanka fared in this period? It has fought a ruthless, ‘take no prisoners’ war with the inner core of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The aftermath of that war did see angularities and unfair treatment of Tamil civilians in refugee camps. At least some of it was avoidable. Yet the larger achievement — dismantling the LTTE and destroying its local and overseas network — cannot be discounted.
Today, Sri Lanka is reaping the peace dividend. Tourism and business are looking up. An infrastructure and reconstruction boom is just beginning. To draw a comparison, the Chinese are building massive port facilities in both Hambantota (south Sri Lanka) and Gwadar (Balochistan, Pakistan). Even after accounting for Beijing’s strategic agenda and the possible dual-use (military and civilian) nature of these facilities, the fact is both these ports will one day be used by cargo ships.
Which one is likely to become an international trade hub quicker — Gwadar or Hambantota? The answer is obvious. The global community will bet on Sri Lanka.
In contrast, Pakistan is engulfed by a religio-political civil war, unending paranoia about blasphemy laws or a world-wide conspiracy against Islam, and its establishment’s active support of terror syndicates and millenarian cults. It has lost opportunity after opportunity — whether economic (inability to leverage the process of globalisation) or social (failure to incubate a middle class that can take charge of its nation) or sporting (an atrophying cricket system).
Take that final example. Pakistan appointed its team captain two weeks before the World Cup; it sent him to the tournament with minimal support staff. The Generals and politicians who run Pakistani cricket were simply preoccupied. In contrast, MS Dhoni has a contingent of about a dozen professionals to call upon, from a South African coach to specialists working on physical conditioning and mental strength.
In the past few years, Pakistani cricket has been battered by a series of fixing scandals. Young cricketers, deprived of the mentorship that comes from a structured cricket environment or the economic opportunities — frequent home series; the chance of playing in the IPL; high-paying endorsement deals — that could act as disincentives against corrupt conduct, have succumbed to greed. If this has not happened to Indian cricketers it is not because they are inherently superior souls to their Pakistani counterparts. It is just that their cricket framework — and their country — is not dysfunctional.
Pakistan, unfortunately, is dysfunctional, and this World Cup has provided disturbing evidence of that. Cruel as it may sound, it is now the Sick Man of Asia. As Mr Gilani, his colleagues and countrymen look back at their day in Mohali, at the sumptuous meal and the reception they got, at the dazzle and bright lights of India’s showstopper sports moment, they need to ponder that hard reality. This future is Pakistan’s for the asking, but only if it wants this future in the first place.
Contrary to fears and apprehensions, this has been a successful tournament. Of course, the advance of the popular South Asian teams has helped. However, fears that the age of Twenty20 cricket would diminish the appeal of traditional limited overs’ cricket have also been negated. Commercial valuations have zoomed. Security concerns have been absent. India and Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh — the third host — have celebrated. Pakistan has been the odd man out.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. In 2006, the cricket boards of India and Pakistan had bid together for the 2011 World Cup, bringing in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as co-hosts to give them a stake in what was essentially a bilateral enterprise. Pakistan was supposed to host a fair share of matches. The semi-final played in Mohali was originally planned for Lahore. It would have been a home game for Afridi’s men.
In 2006, the Afghan war was in full swing and Pakistan was a frontline state. Even so it was presumed the conflict would stabilise by now, 10 years after 9/11. By then Islamabad, which seemed to be moderating and modernising — at least its leaders were promising to do so in the early years of the 21st century — would see the World Cup as a motivation, an impetus to get itself in order.
It turned out otherwise. In 2007, there was a surge in suicide bombings within Pakistan. From six such attacks in 2006, the number soared to 56 the following year. In December 2007, about 18 months after the World Cup bid was won, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. In 2008, the Champions Trophy, scheduled to be held in Pakistan, was cancelled. In 2009, the Sri Lankan cricket team faced gunfire on the streets of Lahore. In parallel, sectarian warfare, jihadi assaults and targetted killings of political leaders continued. Finally, Pakistan lost the World Cup as well.
Consider how the past five years have turned out for India and Sri Lanka. India has survived the worst of the global business slowdown and continued to grow robustly. Government policies and a polity that is essentially non-reformist are still holding it back, but the direction is unmistakable. Indian business has grown rapidly and expanded its geographical footprint.
If he looked around and sent his scouts to visit the air-conditioned boxes in the Mohali stadium, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani would have got a sense of the new India. Some of the world’s richest men, wealth-creators and job-creators of renown, were packed into those boxes, cheering their team. So were movie stars and cultural icons who have built India’s soft power reserves. Chandigarh airport was overburdened with requests from private planes and corporate jets.
Tacky and over-the-top as India’s new-found ostentation may be, it is nevertheless undeniable. It is also an indication of the distance between India and Pakistan. Even in the late-1990s, the Pakistani elite lived and dressed and ‘looked’ richer than its Indian counterpart. Today, this would be a no contest.
The phenomenon runs deeper. A decade of high GDP growth rates has revolutionised the Indian middle classes and their attitudes. It has transformed priorities from issues of history and identity and embittered victimhood. Cricket has been a beneficiary of this rise of middle India — whether in the form of a sponsor and advertiser rush to the World Cup or, to cite another example, inventing the Indian Premier League and making it one of sport’s most successful start-up ventures ever.
How has Sri Lanka fared in this period? It has fought a ruthless, ‘take no prisoners’ war with the inner core of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The aftermath of that war did see angularities and unfair treatment of Tamil civilians in refugee camps. At least some of it was avoidable. Yet the larger achievement — dismantling the LTTE and destroying its local and overseas network — cannot be discounted.
Today, Sri Lanka is reaping the peace dividend. Tourism and business are looking up. An infrastructure and reconstruction boom is just beginning. To draw a comparison, the Chinese are building massive port facilities in both Hambantota (south Sri Lanka) and Gwadar (Balochistan, Pakistan). Even after accounting for Beijing’s strategic agenda and the possible dual-use (military and civilian) nature of these facilities, the fact is both these ports will one day be used by cargo ships.
Which one is likely to become an international trade hub quicker — Gwadar or Hambantota? The answer is obvious. The global community will bet on Sri Lanka.
In contrast, Pakistan is engulfed by a religio-political civil war, unending paranoia about blasphemy laws or a world-wide conspiracy against Islam, and its establishment’s active support of terror syndicates and millenarian cults. It has lost opportunity after opportunity — whether economic (inability to leverage the process of globalisation) or social (failure to incubate a middle class that can take charge of its nation) or sporting (an atrophying cricket system).
Take that final example. Pakistan appointed its team captain two weeks before the World Cup; it sent him to the tournament with minimal support staff. The Generals and politicians who run Pakistani cricket were simply preoccupied. In contrast, MS Dhoni has a contingent of about a dozen professionals to call upon, from a South African coach to specialists working on physical conditioning and mental strength.
In the past few years, Pakistani cricket has been battered by a series of fixing scandals. Young cricketers, deprived of the mentorship that comes from a structured cricket environment or the economic opportunities — frequent home series; the chance of playing in the IPL; high-paying endorsement deals — that could act as disincentives against corrupt conduct, have succumbed to greed. If this has not happened to Indian cricketers it is not because they are inherently superior souls to their Pakistani counterparts. It is just that their cricket framework — and their country — is not dysfunctional.
Pakistan, unfortunately, is dysfunctional, and this World Cup has provided disturbing evidence of that. Cruel as it may sound, it is now the Sick Man of Asia. As Mr Gilani, his colleagues and countrymen look back at their day in Mohali, at the sumptuous meal and the reception they got, at the dazzle and bright lights of India’s showstopper sports moment, they need to ponder that hard reality. This future is Pakistan’s for the asking, but only if it wants this future in the first place.
