Jhakas | Sanjay Jha
They keep saying that terror is faceless. For those who saw the madness outside Gaddafi cricket stadium last morning in Lahore, they knew that above it all, terrorism is heartless. Just pause for a moment and think; just what in heavens does a Mahela Jayawardene, Thilan Samaraweera or a Ajantha Mendis have to do with geopolitical issues and some ill-defined political aspirations and ideological obsessions of sectarian groups in Pakistan? Nothing! What is Kumar Sangakkara's perspective on Taliban's rising militancy and occupancy of the Swat valley, and does Chaminda Vaas represent a US covert operation to flush out Osama bin Laden from the hilly terrains of north-western Pakistani province?
These innocuous, gregarious, down-to-earth Sri Lankans are career sportspeople; all they know is to bat like ferocious tigers, bowl with deadly accuracy, and field with unbridled enthusiasm. Beyond that, they are as harmless and simple as that rabbit staring at us with a confounded expression in the children's park. But yesterday, some people thought that they deserved to be killed, butchered with clinical precision, surprised in their best years, and sent home to Colombo in black coffins. Thankfully, their inimical foul plot was only partially successful. But the damage has been done; the terrorization of cricket is now a hard reality. Continue reading below
That Pakistan is in a state of rapid obsolescence is an over-done understatement; we do not have to revisit that . Let it be understood that the word "governance" is conspicuous by its mysterious absence from the vast land that has now become the kindergarten classroom for turning out back-packers hitch-hiking into the modern highway of global terrorism. And yet, despite the looming threat, one always lives on hope, the slender belief that no matter how bitter two enemies might be or how truculent and trenchant the current equations between squabbling factions, hatred and vindictiveness will not assume irrational dimensions of frightening proportions. That the common man will not be engaged in the military-political conflict, that he will not be made a easy victim.
26/11 was damning proof that in fact, just the opposite was really happening. The man on the street walking homewards and the one having a quiet meal, only thinking about his daily bread and his monthly pay-cheque, was actually being brutally slaughtered to death. Because he was clueless. Unprepared. Unarmed. And frankly, otherwise hopes to live till 80 years of age. The Sri Lankan cricketers were equally clueless, unarmed, unprepared for what transpired in three minutes of bizarre mayhem. Providentially, they have survived. And can still hope to live till they are entitled to retirement benefits.
For Asian cricket , this is a mighty blow, as they have been of late flexing their mighty billion dollar biceps and rising political clout. But it is time to take a rain-check. Two LTTE manned planes bombed Colombo city last week, and in Bangladesh an internal mutiny left corpses of police officers buried in a sickening heap. Which leaves India as the one sane place amidst the prevailing chaos, but highly vulnerable nevertheless and in a continuous state of red alert. That is hardly comforting news. Cricket, in the circumstances, will have to occupy the corner back-seat.
I heard an ICC official state yesterday that IPL is not an ICC-backed official tournament, so he was hamstrung from commenting on its security aspects as the countdown to its second-edition begins this summer. I thought that was egregiously asinine and extremely opportunistic. The revered gentleman forgot that IPL's glamour quotient comes from international players, and the carnival floodlit environment with cheerleaders et al in fact could provide trouble-makers with a perfect launch pad for rocket-bombs. Of course, the ICC bosses would have no comprehension of the scale of operational challenge in holding the world's largest and most complex democratic general elections simultaneously this April-May 2009.
I grew up reading about the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes. Yesterday, the images of gunmen at Gaddafi was a reminder that when hate, revenge and distrust takes over then nothing matters. Not even the humility of Jayawardene, the modesty of a Muralitharan, or the delightful strokes of a Dilshan. The only equalizer for the blinded is a bullet.
Yesterday, cricket, played by a mere 10 nations became a global sport at last, apparently a big-time annual ICC agenda, instead redefined, repositioned and reinvented by a dozen men in the killing fields.
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