Cricket does not need politicians

In the lead up to the India-Pakistan match at the 2019 World Cup, an India-based Twitter handle tweeted a sentiment which this writer wholeheartedly disagreed with - there is so much jingoism in the build up to this match, the user opined, that they would rather root for a Pakistan win.

Immediately after India beat Pakistan, politicians from all sides of India's great political tamasha rushed in to congratulate the Indian team for the win - India had only won a group match and not the World Cup itself - which they well might - so the congratulations were a bit silly, if politically expedient.

This, however, is the age when everything in India is a matter of political manoeuvre, an age where unquestioning obedience to the dominant political force seems to be rapidly spreading, and one in which the failure to celebrate every little thing, irrespective of consequence, is sought to be made out nearly as big a sin as showing the willingness to criticise the wrongs of the PM, the party and the army, in that order.

But for a lifelong cricket fan - and one who believes that the cynicism and constant snickering about fixing speaks more about those that do the insinuating than about India's cricket players - this interest in cricket by political leaders of all hues needs to be unequivocally resisted.

Cricket is India's national sport and one which Indians, apart from those that profess not to care for it, love with a passion.

For politicians to wade into it risks changing cricket into a crutch for all sorts of political opportunism - sample, for instance, Home Minister Amit Shah's blatantly political tweet which mixed cricket with his party's chest-thumping over "surgical strikes".

Two instances of this politicising of cricket stand out - after the Pulwama attack which claimed the lives of 49 Indian soldiers, social media went into overdrive demanding India not play Pakistan at the World Cup. Two of India's greatest and most respected cricketers, Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar, were the subject of much bile when they called out the stupidity of that idea. This, at a time when there was no political will for India to cut off trade, cultural and diplomatic ties with Pakistan.

More recently, when MS Dhoni was asked to remove a logo of a territorial army unit from his gloves as its presence ran afoul of the ICC's logo policies, Indian social media again went into overdrive demanding, among other things, that Dhoni should refuse to comply, or that the BCCI should withdraw the Indian team from the World Cup. The latter led to a most watchable snippet on live TV when Sunil Gavaskar's acerbic response to the suggestion left no one in any doubt about how much merit he thought it had. Good sense, often in short supply at the BCCI, eventually prevailed with Dhoni complying.

It is this tendency for politicians and the entire industry of hyper-nationalism that has sprung up in recent times to attempt to make cricket a proxy for everything their politics that stands for which hurts the sport. It is entirely possible that a stupid administration will make a mess of cricket as is the case with the Sri Lanka's SLC or Pakistan's PCB. That can be remedied - but the misuse of cricket as a political proxy is both dangerous and damaging.

How far it has already gone is evident when Twitter users want the Indian cricket team to "dedicate their win against Pakistan to the martyrs of Pulwama" or when Facebook users post tweets by Balochistan politicians celebrating an Indian win.

The objections to this political abuse of cricket - or any other sport for that matter - are not based merely on separating the purity of sport from the fundamentally abhorrent nature of politics, though that, on its own, should suffice as a reason. The objections are also based on what politics does to sport - virtually every sport in India today, especially if it is an Olympic sport, is a sorry mess thanks to political interference. Anurag Thakur, BJP politician, but also a cricket fanatic who wanted to get into cricket administration is a case study in how cricket can so easily be bent to the will of politics and, in doing so, hurts itself. Thakur, with no real cricket playing credentials, nevertheless met the requirement that BCCI office holders should have played first-class cricket by the simple expedient of using his substantial political clout in his home state of Himachal Pradesh to get himself picked for all of one first-class match, at which he turned out as captain!

The distance from Thakur to a completely politicised, messed up cricket structure is much shorter than we realise - all it needs is a look at India's southern and western borders to see what politics has done to their cricket teams.

Make it clear to politicians that they aren't welcome in the sport. Or risk making a mess of it.