End game at Sharjah

End game at Sharjah

The broad hints that Sports Minister Uma Bharati has been dropping for some time now have fructified in Sunday's statement from her ministry that India will not be participating in cricket tournaments held in ``non-regular venues'' for the next three years at least. It has taken this measure because it believes that such events have become ``hot-beds of betting and match-fixing''. In the immediate term, this means of course that the country will not be participating in the triangular Coca-Cola Cup tournament, which is to be played in Sharjah from Sunday next. But it also means that expat cricket lovers, in places like Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Toronto, will now no longer get to watch Sachin Tendulkar or V.V.S. Laxman hit that magnificent cover drive, check out the new spinning sensation called Harbhajan Singh, and generally cheer along with their paper tricolours the team from Mother Country. Which is a great shame, really, because expat events were beginning to have a multiplier effect on the reach, appealand commercial viability of Indian cricket.

The question is, should the Sports ministry be interfering in such matters in the first place? Ideally, deciding whether and where cricket can be played is not the business of the government. In normal times, the Sports ministry has really no cause to pad up and play cricket or, rather, play cricket politics. Unfortunately these are neither ideal nor normal times. These are times when match-fixers have proved their ability to decide the outcome of a match before the coin has been tossed, these are times when many an extremely talented cricketer has demonstrated that he is more than willing to sell his mother for a dollar cheque. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today submits to the government order, although it stands to lose an estimated $300,000 dollars as a consequence, because it knows that it has no moral right to oppose it. Having failed so abysmally in its appointed task of regulating the playing of cricket in India and of steering it clear from the influence of the mafia and itsnetwork of bookies, all it can do today is to meekly nod its acquiescence.

In the process, it's not just veterans Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, Farokh Engineer and Chetan Sharma, for whose benefit the matches were to be played at Sharjah, who are the losers. Sharjah, despite its ``non-regular'' status, has provided the backdrop to some of the most exciting moments of the game over 17-odd years. It may have been just a happy coincidence, but some of Tendulkar's most treasured moments were played out here. It was here that he reached his 2000th, 3000th, and 4000th run, against UAE in 1994, Sri Lanka in 1995 and South Africa in 1996. Then again, it was at Sharjah, in April 1998, that he wielded that magic bat to yield 143 and 134 in the space of a couple of days. There were even some piquant moments, like the time the Indian team returned home after a defeat to face hoardings with the legend, ``Sharjah-Harjah'' emblazoned on them. But all that is in the past. It can only be hoped that the future will prove more kind to Indian cricket than the present.