Finally, the green signal, but … Karachi will feel aggrieved

Never before has a tour itinerary been awaited with such anticipation and anxiety. There was the apprehension that there still might be a tw...

Never before has a tour itinerary been awaited with such anticipation and anxiety. There was the apprehension that there still might be a twist in the tail — and some will not be convinced till the Indian cricket team actually arrives in Pakistan, bag and cricket baggage.

The BCCI added to the suspense by doling out information in bits and pieces and the PCB answered queries with a dead, defensive bat. Good God, man, we were planning a cricket tour, not charting the course of a mission to Mars. The Pakistan media did its own speculation and Dawn, the premier English-language newspaper, trained its guns angrily on the PCB accusing it of turning the issue into a big joke and creating unnecessary confusion.

An unfair allegation for, if there is any blame to be shared, both boards have to share it equally or neither board is to be blamed. Security is a no-go area for both and is deemed such a sensitive subject that the cricket boards have become bit players in an Alfred Hitchcock film.

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The sticking point was whether Karachi and Peshawar would figure in the tour’s programme and it has been decided to give them half a loaf: no test matches but ODIs.

Karachi certainly will feel aggrieved. It is Pakistan’s biggest city, a metropolis with a teeming population of 14 million and it will match any Indian city for cricket-madness. Many of Pakistan’s best cricketers, including Javed Miandad and Zaheer Abbas, are products of Karachi’s street cricket, which has served as a nursery. The National Stadium has a capacity of 40,000, as well-appointed a ground as anywhere in the world. It appears to have lost out on its ‘‘image’’ of being a violent city. It is as safe or dangerous as any big city in the world.

With Karachi’s elimination as a Test match venue, Lahore remains the only one that has the facilities to handle adequately the great rush that is expected. The other venues are short of quality hotels. though the grounds themselves are good. Faisalabad has a five-star hotel and Multan a four-star one — and that would be stretching the definition.

The PCB is planning to put up some of the visitors, including media, in guest houses that are pretty comfortable and better than simply make do. But they could be far from the ground and will not have the convenience of a downtown hotel.

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The Indian team’s visit has been delayed by a week. This is no big deal, though all the arrangements and reservations would have to re-adjusted, more toil and sweat for those who must already have gone round the bend in coping with a tour that has had so many twists and turns. The delayed tour means too that it will start in the last gasps of spring and the approach of summer. It could be warm, not yet oppressive, shirt and trouser but no jackets and sweaters.

None of this had dampened the ardour of cricket fans. There have been other cricket tours, including those by India, but not any of them were awaited with such expectancy as this one. There is much pacing about with eagerness and anxiety, as if sweating out the arrival of a first-born. It is as true of Pakistan as it is of India.

Once the tour gets underway, no work will get done in either country. Already minds are getting diverted and cricket is the main topic of conversation and I am getting telephone calls from long-lost friends from as afar as Houston, Texas asking me to use my influence to get them tickets for the matches. Did the British have any idea what was being unleashed when the natives took to playing cricket?