Feel Good, Goodwill and India's Friendship Tour of Pakistan, 2004: Cricket, Politics and Diplomacy in Twenty-First-Century India

Abstract

India's cricket tour of Pakistan in early 2004 evoked a plethora of responses in Indian public life. From learned to laity people began to consider cricket as a means to various ends: a political instrument to generate electoral confidence, a diplomatic ploy to accelerate peace process, an economic means to ameliorate the neighbour's pecuniary distress, a cultural arena to assert cricketing muscle, an emotional tool to soothe traditional enmity, and so on. More importantly, when it comes to India's cricketing relations with Pakistan, the apparent popular perception of an ever-rising enmity stands in striking contrast to the friendly ties between the two cricket boards at international level while the game still remains one major and viable confidence-building arena in the long-term process of normalization of diplomatic relations between the two neighbouring states. This essay seeks to explore, understand and analyze such varied representations of the tour as evident in popular media in the wider context of domestic political debates, sub-continental diplomatic relations and purely cricketing arch-rivalry. We are going there to better the relations between the two countries, and I hope the Indian Government will not allow a handful of people to deprive cricket lovers of some action and tension packed cricket. – Wasim Akram [1] There's no place for sentiment when India meets Pakistan in cricket. My very first experience in Pakistan makes it amply clear that the political differences between these two countries get translated into this game. If you are batting, you feel that even the fielders are hostile. I wish they played more with a spirit of competition than hostility. I must have played about 20 matches against them. It's the spectators who make it so electrifying because people are so tense. No politician can understand the level of this hostility until and unless they go and play on the ground. – Kapil Dev [2] I don't really agree with this goodwill issue – it's a cricket match and both teams are competing to win. – Sourav Ganguly [3] India's Pak tour will surely go down in history as a googly that stumped the jingoists, albeit the debate will go on about how much the tour was about keeping ‘India shining’. But then, politics and sports have always had a love-hate relation. – Boria Majumdar [4]