India tries hand at cricket diplomacy

By James Lamont in Mohali

Published: March 29 2011 17:21 | Last updated: March 29 2011 19:45

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, has seized on Wednesday’s cricket clash between India and Pakistan as a possible balm for his administration’s woes over corruption and a paralysed parliament.

In one of the warmest cross-border gestures for several years. Mr Singh has invited his Pakistani counterpart, Yusuf Raza Gilani, to attend the semi-final World Cup match.

The contest at the Mohali stadium near Chandigarh, capital of the northern state of Punjab, is the biggest sporting contest between the two nations on Indian turf for a decade.

India’s news has for days been dominated by the impending battle with bat and ball, which has pushed the fighting in Libya and Japan’s nuclear crisis to second place and fuelled a burst of advertising.

The game is a sell-out, attracting tens of thousands of fans from all over the country, among them politicians and business leaders. It will be played amid tight security, similar to the protection given to the Commonwealth Games when thousands of security personnel were brought to New Delhi, the capital, last year.

Mr Singh has promoted peace between the two nuclear-armed rivals, which have fought three wars since partition, when Pakistan was split out of British India in 1947 as a Muslim majority state.

At the centre of the dispute is the divided territory of Kashmir, which is claimed by both New Delhi and Islamabad.

The 78-year-old Mr Singh, who was born in what is now Pakistan, has said – to the discomfort of some of his advisers – that the two countries “share the same destiny” and bemoaned the economic cost of the stand-off.

However, he has expressed misgivings about the absence of a negotiating partner across the border, who could deliver a regional peace settlement to end decades of mistrust and hostility.

Likewise, Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, has voiced his regret that Mr Singh has not picked up on his cues to bring the two traditional rivals closer, and wind down the military threat on both sides of the border.
Fans display photographs of Indian cricket players
Cricket fans in Jammu, northern India, get in the mood for their country’s clash with Pakistan in the World Cup semi-final on Wednesday

Last month, New Delhi softened its stance, saying it wanted to restart peace talks, covering all issues, halted after the devastating commando-style attacks by Pakistani militants on Mumbai, India’s financial capital, in November 2008.

On the eve of the match at Mohali, India and Pakistan agreed on Tuesday to allow Indian investigators to travel to Pakistan to question suspects of the attacks. They also agreed to set up a hotline between the two countries to alert leaders to possible terrorist actions.

With a stalled domestic agenda beset by high-profile corruption scandals and an antagonistic Hindu nationalist opposition, Mr Singh senses a possible breakthrough in one of India’s most vexed issues – and a chance to shore up a shaky second term in office.

But cricket diplomacy is a high-stakes game. An Indian victory would give the world’s largest democracy a much-needed confidence boost. Should Pakistan triumph against a highly rated Indian team, bitterness and disappointment would follow.

Shahid Afridi, the Pakistan team’s captain, would then lead his men out in a World Cup final, to be played in Mumbai against Sri Lanka – a bitter pill for even the fairest Indian sports fan to swallow.

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