WITH the Indian team already having been announced, the work is cut out for Pakistani selectors, as they now know the exact composition of the Indian squad and may pick up a side to work on any weaknesses that they may find in the Indian squad. The same applies to groundsmen assigned the task of preparing the playing tracks, as well as the team management, especially the coach, who would, as a matter of routine, go through the process of working out strategies for individual players. So far so good.
However, I have met people in the recent past who wonder if the series would actually go beyond the first one-dayer! There doubts are based on the Indian camp’s insistence to continue raising the bogey of security arrangements and their willingness to stretch their imagination to unimaginable lengths in this regard. Though the tour opt-out clause has been taken care of, if news reports are to be trusted, the very fact that such a thing was raised at an official level was enough to send all kinds of wrong signals to the people.
If Indians had their wish, they might get crowd trouble equated with terrorism, and put it on the agenda of global activity going on against the menace. Several other people have already written on what has been the crowd behaviour in India, especially in matches that involved Pakistan. No one can forget the sight of that haunted stadium in Calcutta that had to be vacated by force in order to allow the game to go on. Also comes to mind the World Cup game that was to be handed over to Sri Lanka because the crowd behaviour in that Indian stadium made it impossible for the game to go on. With such troubles on their home territory, it was surprising to hear such hollow words coming from India. I wrote in my last column about giving the Indians the benefit of the doubt, and let them go by the general perception instead of taking a realistic view of the actual ground position, but when they raised the issue of crowd trouble and blew it out of proportion, they certainly lost at least one supporter.
On the other side of the issue, I really fail to see the logic of picking Karachi to host the first One Day game of the series. As far as I am concerned, everything goes against such a decision. For instance, barring any exceptional circumstances, the euphoria would be at its most frenetic in the first encounter simply because it will be the first time the two teams would be meeting on Pakistani soil after some fifteen years. Adding to the frenzy will be the fact that it will be a One Day game, which naturally attracts a larger crowd than is the case with the longer version of the game. The two camps would be jittery and the security mechanism that has been put in place for the whole tour would not have been tested by then and even a minor incident will have the potential of getting blown up into something more sinister. In short, it will be the most sensitive match of the series that the PCB has decided to host on the most sensitive of all the venues that have been picked for the tour.
Add to it, if you like, all the posturing that have been going on regarding Karachi by PCB officials as well as visiting teams, specially the issue of crowd trouble that has now been unnecessarily added to it by the Indians, and you can imagine some offended spectator crossing the lines of civility. The PCB decision is truly mind-boggling and I have nothing to say to those who wonder if the tour would actually go beyond Karachi, except advising them to do what I am already doing: keep your fingers crossed.
WITH the Indian team already having been announced, the work is cut out for Pakistani selectors, as they now know the exact composition of the Indian squad and may pick up a side to work on any weaknesses that they may find in the Indian squad. The same applies to groundsmen assigned the task of preparing the playing tracks, as well as the team management, especially the coach, who would, as a matter of routine, go through the process of working out strategies for individual players. So far so good.
