Opinion: Match should never have been assigned to Dharamsala

Pakistan’s arrival for the T20 World Championship – after a fortnight of tantalizing suspense — will have relieved a lot many people: those who run the ICC and the BCCI obviously the most. But it has left a lot of the same people red-faced with embarrassment too. The rigmarole that preceded Pakistan’s arrival would have even been funny had the matter not been so grave and shown up cricket authorities and Indian politics to be so shallow.

This was a problem that should never have been. That it spun so much out of control reflects not so much on the fragility of Indo-Pak relations, but how this is also exploited by vested interests to their own ends, without compunction about consequences.

A marquee match as between India and Pakistan should never have been assigned to Dharamsala, a relatively minor centre. This is a ‘biggie’ to deploy a cliché, and deserving of a bigger venue. Mumbai unfortunately remains out of bounds because of the Shiv Sena’s unseemly and often violent recalcitrance to allow Pakistan to play in the city. But while security for the team from across the border was always a concern, the BCCI still had plenty of other choices.

That Dharamsala was picked over all others had not much to do with the safety or facilities it could provide, a lot more because BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur heads the Himachal Pradesh State Cricket Association. There was clearly a political gambit to choosing Dharamsala. The BJP had been ousted from power in Himachal Pradesh. The chief minister then was Thakur’s father, Prem Kumar Dhumal. Getting a blue riband match like this would earn the NJP party brownie points and help Dhumal’s prospects in the next elections.

This is where the ICC should have raised a red flag, when the BCCI top brass decided to play along with Thakur. While the host country can propose which match will be held where, the clearance has to come from the ICC. It will be recalled that in the 2011 World Cup, the ICC had denied Kolkata to host the important India-England match because it believed the stadium renovations hadn’t been completed in time.

The ICC, however, kept mum this time and Dharamsala caught the attention of the cricket world for being assigned arguably the most compelling and volatile contest in cricket currently. While some IPL matches and a couple of internationals have been played here, this mesmerizingly scenic town is more renowned as haven for Tibetan refugees and from where the Dalai Lama spreads his message of peace.

But the tranquility of Himachal Pradesh as well as the universe of cricket, as it were, was shaken to the roots a fortnight ago, when current chief minister Virbhadra Singh suddenly announced that the India-Pak could not be held in Dharamsala. He said that the state security apparatus would not be enough for a match of this scale. He added an emotive dimension to this by saying that families of martyrs who had been killed in the Kargil war were against any match involving Pakistan being played here.

While these objections were not entirely unfounded, the timing betrayed political opportunism by the Congress government in power in the state. Virbhadra had kept quiet for a year to speak up only when the Pakistan team was packing its bags to fly to India. The Himachal chief minister had effectively trumped Thakur politically. But the BCCI was left clutching at straws.  

In my opinion, the Eden Gardens should have been the original choice for the India-Pak match because it met all the parameters required for a game of this importance: high level state security, crowd support et al. One can argue that all’s well that ends well. But this sorry episode has left many important people – administrators and politicians — with egg on their faces, and also sullied the country’s image.