Politics in cricket and cricket in politics

When former Pakistani cricketer Sarfraz Nawaz opened his mouth last week, he had everyone in stitches. He said Bangladesh won the ODI series against India because India conspired to keep Pakistan out of the Champions Trophy in 2017. But this wasn't the first time this conspiracy theorist went Chicken Little over a cricketing event. Nawaz said on a Pakistani channel during the World Cup last March that the pitches were being deliberately designed by the International Cricket Council to suit India's strengths.

This time Nawaz sounded as if Bangladesh's victory was a collateral gain from the hostilities between India and Pakistan. He was asked on a television show if Bangladesh was smarter than before to win against India, and he replied with two emphatic no's first, before blurting out his conspiracy theory. He accused India of cutting its nose to spite Pakistan's face.

But he didn't explain why Pakistan suffered the whitewash series defeat to Bangladesh last April. Did India also have a hand in that defeat, or was it because Bangladesh played better than Pakistan? If anything, the Bangladesh team only consistently carried forward its winning streak decimating one country after another.

Nawaz should ask himself why it's a conspiracy when India loses to Bangladesh, but not when Pakistan does. We wouldn't be having this conversation if Pakistan had shown some steel in its bats in Dhaka. The former Pakistani cricketer did a stint in politics as advisor on sports to Benazir Bhutto and that was when his sportsman spirit must have got laced with political guile. Late US vice-president Hubert H. Humphrey once said that to err is human but to blame it on someone else is politics. That's exactly what Nawaz did with his silly statement. To lose is sports, but he turned it into politics by blaming it on others.

Sports and politics have collided throughout history, but there are also examples of collaboration between them. South African president Nelson Mandela used rugby to heal the racial tension that divided the blacks and the whites in his country. Most recently, members of the US football team St. Louis Rams orchestrated the "hands up" gesture before their game against the Oakland Raiders. They expressed solidarity with protestors in Ferguson, Missouri against the fatal shooting of a black teenager. 

At times sports marked watershed moments in history. In 1967, heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali refused to join the US armed forces, saying, "I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong."  He was sentenced to five years in prison, fined USD10,000 and banned from boxing for three years. Political commitment can ennoble sportsman spirit.

Again, misguided political commitment can be a spoilsport. The Black September group killed 11 members of Israel's Olympic Team in Munich in 1972. Yet commitment to sport has smashed political walls many times. Jackie Robinson made history in 1947 when he broke baseball's colour barrier to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the USA. Tennis star Billy Jean King is credited for the change that saw increase in the prize money for women players. African-American boxer Joe Louis knocked down German Max Schmeling within 124 seconds of rematch in 1938, dealing a severe blow to Adolf Hitler's ideological pride over the supremacy of the German race.

Coming back to Bangladesh, there is no reason to believe that its cricket team has played with anything but commitment to the sport in their heart. They have punched above their weight winning against two cricketing giants, which may be a sheer stroke of luck or culmination of their training and hard work. Either way they deserved commendation and Sarfraz Nawaz outrageously missed that point.

It would have been more relevant if he separated the two parts. He could have praised Bangladesh and criticised India, sounding considerate and critical in the same breath. But he got mixed up as rancour took over reason in his mind, producing the ridiculous sound bites that had the climactic effect of the punch line in a joke. 

Pakistan's relationship with Bangladesh has always been on the seesaw, first when they were two provinces of the same country, and now that the former occasionally tends to be a country with provincial minds. Anything that lifts our spirit has been a damper for Pakistan. Meanwhile, those of us who grew up admiring and cheering foreign teams and players are excited to find there are also heroes amongst us. If that's an eyesore to some Pakistanis, we can only feel sorry for them.

Sports can heal political wounds, but it's seldom the other way around. Our cricketers have done us proud when divisive politics is bringing us shame. They have given us the strength to believe that a nation's dreams are an index to its greatness, and the size of a country is no limit for its hopes. 

The writer is the Editor of the weekly First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. 
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com