Source : Times of India (TNN)

Don't mix cricket with religion, urge fans

NEW DELHI - SEP. 26: For millions of fans around the world, and India in particular, cricket itself is a religion -- the Twenty20 version being the latest denomination.

So when Pakistani cricket team’s skipper Shoaib Malik brought a communal hue to the gentleman’s game with a
gratuitous thanks to Muslims all over the world, ostensibly for supporting Pakistan, the blowback on the blogosphere was swift.

The first reaction came from Pakistanis themselves. "How about Hindu and Christian Pakistanis in the US, Canada, and Gulf who supported the Pakistan cricket team? Don’t we count?" wrote "ChristianPak" on the blog Pakistaniat.com .

Others thought the remark was thoughtless and gratuitous considering the Pakistan team itself has had a token representation of a couple of Hindus and a Christian in the past.

It also does not sit well with Pakistan's current attempt, arguably feeble, to present a face of "enlightened moderation" prescribed by its military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

But what rankled many Indians was Malik's attempt to own worldwide Muslim sentiment for Pakistan when India has as many Muslims who support their home team, which has always had a healthy representation of Muslims and other minorities and has been a showcase for India's secular society.

The same holds true of Sri Lanka and England, whose teams are also multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and secular.

While the charitable explanation for Malik's remarks was that he was trying to pre-empt an Islamist backlash at home and did so with poor command of English, the general feeling was he unwittingly revealed the growing radicalisation of the Pakistani cricket team, consonant with Pakistan’s own slide into fundamentalism.

The issue most recently came to the fore during the World Cup in the Caribbean when the mysterious death of Pakistan’s coach Bob Woolmer was linked to his disquiet over the radicalisation of the team and overt expression of religion in team meetings.

"The problem here isn't the syntax, it is the sentiment. I don't expect Shoaib Malik to be a politically correct intellectual, but it is reasonable to expect him to know the world of cricket that he inhabits," cricket historian Mukul Keshavan observed on his blog, pointing out that it is a world where Muslims, Hindus and a Sikh currently play for England, where Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and a Hindu play for Sri Lanka, where Hashim Amla turns out for South Africa, where a Patel plays for New Zealand, where Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Hindus play (and have always played) for India.

"Why would Shoaib think, then, that the Muslims of the world were collectively rooting for the Pakistan team or that they felt let down by its defeat? Did he stop to think of how Danish Kaneria, his Hindu team-mate, might feel hearing his Test skipper all but declare that the Pakistan team is a Muslim team that plays for the Muslims of the world?," Keshavan asked, adding, "It is one thing to be publicly religious-Shahid Afridi thanked Allah and Matt Hayden and Shaun Pollock are proud, believing Christians - quite another to declare that your country's cricket eleven bats for international Islam."

But the incident did not come as a surprise to many cricket fans, who pointed out on blogs that religious fervor has been part of Pakistani cricket ever since it resumed engagement with India in the late 1970s.

Ahead of the Twenty20 final clash, Pakistani newspapers made overt references to the final being held during Ramzan and predicted victory over India because it was the holy month, noting also that Pakistan’s World Cup victory in 1992 had also been achieved during Ramzan.