Editorials

India Today, May 31, 1999
May 31, 1999

Life is a Pitch

India's cricketers -- overplayed, overpaid and over and done with

Edits If the cricket teams of the world ever met for a beauty contest, they'd crown India Calamity Jane. There is this utterly unquestionable gift for disaster, which was played out yet again at Leicester on May 19 against Zimbabwe. Mohammed Azharuddin's squad left India with more support-in terms of both tangible merchandise and intangible goodwill-than any of its 11 rivals. Less than a week into the tournament, it has comfortably slipped into also-ran mode. If the team continues to hurtle downhill in the coming days, the upshot is obvious. Azharuddin will be sacked as captain. The lacklustre coach too will make way for a successor of no doubt matching abilities. Little else will change.

In cricket-indeed, in every area of human competition-victory is born of a hunger to win. As anybody who has watched the numerous recent replays of the Prudential Cup final of 1983 will agree, there was a free-spirited freshness to Kapil Dev's team that year. In contrast, Azharuddin and company have played virtually non-stop since the previous World Cup of 1996. In addition to sheer physical fatigue, they are mentally jaded. Paid equally for victory and defeat, against Bangladesh and against Australia, they have no incentive to excel in exceptional circumstances. In sum they have lost perspective, unable to discriminate between the mid-summer madness of a home series against mediocre opposition and the World Cup held in England. While overtly noble, the business of carrying cricket to new markets-Singapore, Toronto, Dubai-has created a vicious circle of money and matches that has trapped players and administrators alike. This week's debacle gives Indian cricket two options. The first: rehaul strategy, bring in performance-based payments and select B teams for supposedly promotional visits to places like Nairobi. The second is simpler: blame the fates for Sachin Tendulkar's absence and insist all would have been well had he been around. Take your pick.

Caught Napping in Kargil

Tell Pakistan brinkmanship and nuclear weapons don't go together

Edits Pakistan's ability to innovate nasty twists and turns to the Kashmir situation never ceases to surprise. Undertaking what amounts to a cross-border attack-across a 100-km frontage of the 740-km line of control dividing the two countries-in Kashmir is breathtaking in its audacity, if not irresponsibility. The Government, as is its wont, has chosen to underplay the scale of the action that required the army to rush tens of thousands of troops and heavy weaponry for emergency operations to round up and eliminate or eject the invaders. There are large stretches of border with China and Pakistan that are snow-bound for several months and the posts there are abandoned for that period. The Indian Army, which is supposed to maintain surveillance of this border, and the Research and Analysis Wing, which is supposed to provide external intelligence, must take a share of the blame for not anticipating Pakistani irregulars would occupy these posts before the Indians re-established themselves. Good intelligence and surveillance could have pre-empted what happened in the Kargil sector.

The authorities are taking the plea that the action was "normal" in the special context of Kashmir and does not require any more attention than it has so far merited. But to compare the events to previous Pakistani moves would be an error. In the past, Pakistani artillery fired in support of infiltrating militants; this time, the bombardment was apparently to support their occupation of Indian territory. What Pakistan intended is not clear. It violated the Lahore declaration, which recognised the need for responsible behaviour because of the nuclear dimension in the relationship between the two countries. Surprisingly, the Ministry of External Affairs has still not seen it fit to undertake wider diplomacy to point out to the world the Pakistani proclivity for brinkmanship- and its possible consequences.

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