Sarfaraz Ahmed not aware of Pakistan Cricket Board’s threat to end En…

Former Pakistan captain and head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed has denied having any knowledge of Pakistan Cricket Board’s threat to end the tour of England during the second Test here, which was reportedly made around the airing of Sky’s interview with Imran Khan’s sons.

“I don’t know anything. I’m just focusing on the match,” Sarfaraz said when asked what he knew about the situation and of the conversation between the PCB and the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Sarfaraz was further asked if there was any suggestion that Pakistan players would not take the field after lunch. “No, no. You’re talking about the interview? We don’t know about the interview,” he said while interrupting the question. biznow.biz

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As we celebrate the national sports day weekend, it was very significant to hear the Prime Minister say that India needs to participate in more events at the Olympic Games to add to its medals tally. That’s absolutely the case and is something that has been ignored for years. Sport is finally being talked about and perhaps being given the importance that it deserves. It is no longer about just turning up. Tokenism to be precise. Rather, it is about preparing well, making a proper structure and going on to win. And that’s what brings me to Test Twenty, a format I have been championing for a while now and one which looks all set to conduct its inaugural season in November.

I have been in touch with the founder and the Board members for a while now. You don’t get men like Raj Kumar Sharma or Matt Hayden to back a concept unless there is meat in it. And the founder Gaurav Bahirvani has taken great pains to put together an idea that has equality and sensitivity at its core. It is about giving more and more people opportunity, allowing the youth to chase their dreams and pursue a career. It brings together youth from across the world in the same space and in that sense is a fantastic socialisation opportunity. It is exactly the use of sport as soft power that we are speaking about.

For investors, it is the perfect option. The ticket size isn’t humungous to start with, has parity at its core and most importantly is a story of empowerment from the very start. You want to make the right noise, this format lends itself to it. You also have the big names associated with it to give the credibility investors need and there’s every reason to believe that the investment will turn out to be a good one in the next five years.

What does an investor look to in a pitch? What prompts him or her to back a concept? When will you put money into something? These are questions I have often grappled with in my journey as a founder in the last five years. And in all honesty the answers are fairly simple. All it needs for an investor to invest is a good idea. An idea that has its heart in the right place and one that is narrating the right story. That parity, or the need of it, is at the core of our society is a given. For a format to champion it is rare and there’s no reason why people won’t notice. You back a horse you think can win and from that standpoint Test Twenty is the perfect candidate.

It will be great if the inaugural season is played in a place with a strong schools cricket programme. That’s what will make it interesting with talent flowing through organically. May be that’s why the organisers are exploring the Sri Lanka option. Having followed the journey closely, I can only wish it all success in the months to come.

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In the footprints of history, nothing is etched in stone. With the passage of time and changing perspectives, the past acquires meanings that can colour the present, just as the present can reshape our understanding of the past.

Kashmir, with its many-layered complex history, is a place where cricket has often come to symbolise something beyond sport. The news that its state team will play ‘Rest of India’ for the Irani Cup — a regular annual fixture featuring the current Ranji Trophy champions — in the first week of October in Srinagar, therefore, raises intriguing possibilities.

Before one jumps into a contest that pits Jammu and Kashmir cricketers against the might of India — or to be politically more precise, the Rest of India — there is a bit of disturbing history worth revisiting. It is history that may cast a long shadow over a cricket match that on the surface is merely about bat and ball.

The year 1983 is embellished with the golden hue of India’s crowning glory: winning the World Cup of one-day cricket. It was an unlikely triumph that turned the established order of world cricket upside down. ‘Kapil’s Devils’, the epithet that a British newspaper bestowed on that all-conquering Indian team, became the phrase by which they are remembered. On that famous, sun-drenched afternoon at Lord’s on June 25, India had done the impossible — defeating the seemingly invincible West Indies to become world champions.

Barely 110 days later, on October 13, 1983, the newly crowned world champions found themselves facing the same rivals, this time amid one of the most picturesque settings imaginable, the Sher-i-Kashmir stadium in Srinagar.

The majestic backdrop of the mountains, with the massive Chinar trees shedding their golden-amber, paw-shaped leaves, provided an evocative setting for the first encounter between the two teams since the World Cup final.

Post-Partition Kashmir had generated enormous heat, dust and turmoil, becoming a land of divided loyalties and competing narratives, with its place within India repeatedly contested, despite its accession in 1947 under certain constitutional provisions.

To the utter dismay of those whose loyalty to India was unquestioned, the cricketing skirmish on the field was pushed into the background by spectators openly hostile to the Indian team. To the surprise, and perhaps delight, of the West Indies players, they found themselves being cheered as though they were playing on home ground.

Many objective accounts and my own conversations with the cricket writers who chronicled the match helped build a picture of a place where anti-India sentiment was visible enough to stun those unfamiliar with Kashmir’s thorny past.

These very journalists had just a day earlier partaken of the sumptuous wazwan, the traditional elaborate cuisine, laid out by the state’s Chief Minister for the teams and the Press. It was hard for them to digest being witness to a large crowd openly resentful of the Indian team, the next day.

At the lunch break, a few mischievous elements stormed the ground and dug up the pitch, while the weather too played its part. The match had to be curtailed, with West Indies chasing the revised target without losing a wicket.

The unsettling and unexpected outcome of that match was not the defeat, but the disturbing manner in which a festering wound had surfaced as a spectacle for the world to watch.

More than four decades have passed since that day in Srinagar. It may be a long span in an individual’s life or a nation’s journey, but is barely a dot in the collective existence of Planet Earth. As of today, cricket has placed the erstwhile state in a pre-eminent position in India’s sporting structure. Jammu and Kashmir are no longer adjuncts to the country’s well-oiled cricket machine.

They are now Ranji Trophy champions, while a new generation of homegrown players are staking their claim to the national team, with Auqib Nabi being part of the Indian team that toured Sri Lanka. Before him came Parvez Rasool, the pioneer who broke the barrier by representing India in an ODI.

Politically, the landscape has changed dramatically. The violent uprising that began in 1989, the fratricidal killings and the cries of “azadi” belong to the past. The contentious Article 370 has been abrogated and the state has been reduced to the status of a UT. On the surface, a measure of calm prevails in the Valley that is intermittently broken by terror killings. Whether it signals the arrival of a lasting peace or is merely an ominous silence before the storm is a question only time can answer.

Come October, the crowds will stream into the Sher-i-Kashmir stadium. Will they see the match merely as a sporting contest? In the context of the match, their opposition to Rest of India can in no way be seen as an act of treason as it was on that day in 1983, when the Indian team was booed and the West Indians cheered.

Times have changed, but have the people changed enough to appreciate a cricket match for the sporting skills on display and not for what it could symbolise? In the long arc of history, the past can be reinterpreted from the gaze of the present. It is the future that remains as uncertain to predict as the toss of a coin that precedes a cricket match.

— The writer is the author of ‘Not Quite Cricket’ and ‘Not Just Cricket’

Harmanpreet Kaur’s India will look to banish their ordinary run in the shortest format while facing questions over their consistency and form as they take on Thailand in their Women’s T20 Asia Cup Group A opener here on Sunday.

India have been the most dominant team in the Women’s T20 Asia Cup over the last decade — winning the title thrice in five editions of the T20 format since 2016-17 — but their performances bring forth more concerns than assurances at the moment.

India have lost nine of 16 T20Is this year, and their most recent loss — against Australia in the Women’s T20 World Cup — knocked them out of the competition at the group stage itself. Thailand, meanwhile, will look to draw confidence from their victory over Hong Kong in their opening match, for which they had to work hard. A sedate start led to Thailand finishing at a modest 120 for nine, but they did well with the ball and in the field to restrict Hong Kong to 114 for seven.

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