Sports and Politics just don’t mix

Pakistani cricket fans burn an effigy of the IPL commissioner Lalit Modi during a protest in Lahore over the snubbing of the country's players in the IPL auction.

As I lay on my couch one late night, I flicked trough the multitude of channels. Most of which had nothing but depressing late night news, “bombing is Iraq”,” terror level raised in London” or “the us is warning ...” none of that cheerful good news you hear on the 6 clock news, this was hard hitting stuff. After some more channel surfing I finally found something a lot more joyous the ‘Indian Premier League’ better known as the ‘IPL’. The IPL a cricket fans heaven and all on free to air TV (channel 10 signed a 5 year contract for an estimated 15 million dollars). It was the Kings XI Punjab vs. Kolkata Knight Riders both teams owned by the BIGGEST names in Bollywood. I sat back and watched Chris Gayle (captain of the West Indies cricket team) hit six after six and thought this is great, way better than all the disheartening news reports of terrorism and politics.

But as I looked closer at the players in the teams I realised that not a single one of them was Pakistani. Pakistan are the current T20 world champions and yet not a single player is in the IPL, then like some sort of religious awaking I remembered a news article I had read a few months back and suddenly the IPL wasn’t so far away from terrorism and politics as I once thought.

Could it be a mere coincidence that not a single team placed a bid for any Pakistani player for was it part of a wider conspiracy. Some have suggested that they were not bought because the Pakistani players have not been up to scratch, that they were judged on their performance rather than their nationality. This sounds reasonable until you look at the finer details, while it is true that some players have been under performing this is mostly in the longer versions of the game. It is true that Pakistan didn't win a single game here in Australia during the summer, but they put up a good fight and nearly won on several occasions. On the other hand the West Indians didn't win any games this summer, and on most occasions they were nowhere close, and yet most of their players went for a lot of money during the IPL auctions.

Thus I’m lead to another reason. India and Pakistan’s relation has always been on a knives’ edge with many wars and constant border skirmishes. But after the Mumbai attacks (ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across the city of Mumbai killing 173) on 26 November 2008 by Pakistani terrorist, tensions have been extremely high. This event is no doubt the reason for the exclusion of the Pakistani players, of course this has been extensively denied by the IPL organizers and the Indian government. Before the auction even started the Indian government had be extremely slow in handing out visas to the Pakistani players. Sport has been a unifier on many occasions; it has turned ordinary men and women into little more than Demi –gods, and to let all this be corrupted by politics is very distressing. Even in ancient Greece warring tribes, fractions, states and even countries used to come together to participate in the annual games, to not attend was a sign of great disrespect, and to not welcome each other with open arms was an ever bigger disrespect.

So if it could be done over 2000 years ago why not now, like the old cliché goes ‘sports and politics just don’t mix.’ I hope next year I will see Shahid Afridi out there hitting all those sixes.

PS: Kings XI Punjab won by 8 Wickets