Cricket & Lahore: Atrocities, Shambles, Miracles

By. Prof. Michael Roberts

(March 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Cricket lost its innocence on 3rd March at Lahore. The horrendous assault on the cricketing convoy near the Gadaffi Stadium at Lahore has been an eye-opener to those, among them myself, who did not think cricketers would be targeted.

The Pakistanis promised presidential level protection. What they delivered was inadequate cover by ordinary policemen who mostly paid for this failure with their lives. The security screen was a shambles. Chris Broad and others hit the nail on the head in castigating the authorities; and the retorts by Butt and Miandad only compounded the image of lunatic incompetency in high places.

Preliminary readings in Pakistan suggest that the immediate hands behind the atrocity were drawn from either the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) or the Lashka-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). Both adhere to jihadi ideology of the kind associated with Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Such thinking has extended its reach after the regime of General Musharraf was displaced. There has been a power vacuum since, exacerbated by arm-wrestling between President Zardari’s PPP and Nawaz’ Sharif’s PML. The regional government of Punjab overseeing Lahore was recently dismissed as one step in this struggle -- so that the police high command was mostly new.

As one Pakistani analyst described the new context, “the writ of our state is threadbare” and there is “no shortage of groups wishing to undermine the government.” The atrocity at Lahore seems to be the work of jihadists pursuing such an objective by appealing to a particular constituency rather than the cricket-mad Pakistani populace-at-large. Way back in April 2004 the Zarb-e-Taiba, a Lashkar-e-Taiba magazine, proclaimed that “we should throw the bat and seize the sword and instead of hitting six or four, cut the throats of the Hindus and the Jews.” It deemed cricket to be “an evil and sinful sport,” altogether “un-Islamic” in contrast with archery, horse-riding and swimming (Swamy in Hindu, 5 March 2009).

Understood thus, the Lahore atrocity is a scimitar thrust into the heart of our cherished game. It was a miracle that the cricketing cluster exposed so cruelly at Lahore survived relatively intact, with only three serious injuries. The Sri Lankan coach was saved in part by the work of their intrepid driver. We may never know why the militants, who wandered off nonchalantly, did not advance to wipe out the officials who were sitting ducks (flat on stomach actually) in the mini-bus.

Chris Broad stood tall at this perilous moment. In the coach, as several reports indicate, the Lankan cricketers, 3 Aussies and one Brit faced the ordeal calmly.

The “composure of the Sri Lankan cricket team,” said David Hopps, “has been extraordinary [for] there have been no recriminations, no histrionics, just a team grateful to have survived.” Mahela Jaywardene typically attributed this good fortune to karma: “I am a Buddhist and I think we have done some merit in our previous birth to escape with minor injuries."

This fortitude was complemented by the judicious reviews expressed by the Sri Lankan team’s leaders, Jayawardene and Sangakkara. Their restraint stands in contrast with the widespread rush to conclusions in Australia justifying the refusal to tour Pakistan by Australia Cricket in recent years. Such a self-serving verdict is of a-historical cast. For one, it glosses over the political transformations outlined earlier in this article. For another it slides over the fact that other sides toured Pakistan in the recent past without any problems. South Africa toured in October 2003 and October 2007, India in March 2004 and January 2006, and Sri Lankan in October 2004. Indeed, the Indian tour of 2004 produced elevating cricket, generous crowd appreciation of both sides and served as a heart-warming tale of cricketing diplomacy within the tempestuous saga of Indo-Pakistan political relations.

As erudite as intelligent, Kumar Sangakkara’s remarks underline the changed circumstances. Let me quote him selectively in logical order:

• “We had always felt pretty safe in Pakistan …. It shows how naïve we were. …With hindsight, we probably underestimated the security threat.”

• “We realise now that sports people and cricketers are not above being attacked. All the talk that ‘no one would target cricketers’ seems so hollow now. Far from being untouchable, we are now prize targets for extremists. That's an uncomfortable reality we have to come to terms with.”

IN HINDSIGHT. NOW. That is the central facet of Sangakkara’s reflections. Here, in this assessment, we have a corrective to those media comments that focus on Pakistan alone. It highlights the grim realities facing cricket in its grand forms everywhere. The batsman’s helmet now has to be supplemented with a ‘steel grille’ of commandoes as security screen around our flannelled fools. -Sri Lanka Guardian