The Night Cricket Died

By: Callistus Davy

It is written in the books of the discerning that cricket is a gentleman’s game. No longer is it and this thing called cricket needs a new name.

That it happened at the Asia Cup is enough for Westerners to have the last laugh after what India’s cricketers did by refusing to move on after a match against Pakistan.

That the sport of cricket had to be dragged in or used to settle a political grudge was the biggest tragedy the once English summer sport was ever subjected to. By refusing to shake the hands of another nation’s cricketers, India had become a pariah.

Today cricket is no longer the gentleman’s game, but another form of sport in the hands of the International Cricket Council (ICC) that is now under Indian influence to do as it pleases and the catastrophic results are now showing.

The power of money is more important than the spirit and ethics of the game. The rivalry between India and Pakistan has nothing to do with Hindu versus Muslim but more to do with one party displaying it is superior politically, militarily, economically, technologically, scientifically and culture-wise that has extended its tentacles onto the cricket field that culminated with the biggest snub that took place when India refused to shake hands with Pakistan after their match on Sunday night.
It was the night cricket died.

India, the purists will argue, is damn too much and their merchandise of vanity in the form of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has gone too much into their heads. Common Sri Lankan cricket followers are no admirers of the Indian team and its mighty keepers who stand branded as answerable for the rot that has taken place in the governance of cricket in the island. Indian sympathises in the island will be quick to claim that what India did to Pakistan was what Sri Lanka did to Bangladesh some years ago refusing to shake the hands of the Bangladeshis.

There can be no comparison to both incidents. The Sri Lankan players protested against the unsportsmanlike behaviour of the Bangladesh team for claiming the scalp of Angelo Matthews, timed-out, a kind of dismissal that had never taken place before and against the ethics and spirit of the game.

India took the field with a pre-conceived notion to target Pakistan politically. Their captain Suriyakumar Yadav confirmed it as he dedicated the win to his country’s armed forces. Refusal to play at all would have been acceptable under the circumstances. To have Pakistan as their sparring partner and then show them the door is murder most foul. Of all sports, cricket in South Asia is what binds people in the region, probably the best form of acceptance in this part of the world where tragically some people in high places have been left behind or are yet to grow up.

Tragically India has used cricket to throw its weight around disregarding the norms of decent public conduct. India can take pride and boast that its economy is among the top five in the world. But to the Sri Lankan media, some sections of the Indian media or their trumpet blowers, are terribly biased when it comes to an India-Pakistan contest to the point of insanity. Referring to an India-Pakistan cricket match as the world’s biggest sporting rivalry is a blatant manifestation of the media hysteria that surrounds such a contest.

It is time the independent media refer to the India-Pakistan cricket encounter as the world’s most one-sided or lopsided contest. Taking the IPL too much into their heads, not a single Pakistan player can ever feature in it. It is good to play Pakistan, but bad to shake their hands or enlist them to play in their franchise teams.

Sri Lankans are no strangers to the way the high and mighty call the shots in running cricket in India. Sri Lankans know how and why their best women’s cricketer, one of the best batters in the world, Chamari Atapattu was not considered for a place in the women’s IPL segment. Credit to Sri Lanka that Atapattu found friendship in Australia playing in its domestic League. It is time somebody gave the ICC and India a bellyful that cricket is not anyone’s private property.
That is if gentleman’s cricket is still alive.