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It’s official, Pakistan is playing the February 15 game against India. The marquee event of the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup is definitely on! However, it took a lot of doing for the ICC to convince Pakistan out of its stand to forfeit the high-voltage encounter. That the world cricket czars had to make a beeline to the PCB headquarters in Lahore to seek an audience with Pakistan cricket authorities, pursuing them to keep the high-grossing clash of the cricket titans going as scheduled, proves Pakistan is indispensable to the international cricket.
Pakistan stood for the principles of fairness, equality, justice, inclusion, etc that sports is supposed to promote, and emerged victorious and dignified even while climbing down the ladder. Pakistan’s decision to boycott the match against India came in solidarity with the Bangladesh team that was thrown out of the mega event by the ICC for refusing to travel to India due to genuine security concerns and demanding neutral venue for its matches. The ICC did not take much time to replace Bangladesh with Scotland, exhibiting sheer double standards. Remember just the last year, the world cricket governing body, virtually led by a powerful Indian cricket board, had preferentially treated India when it had refused to tour Pakistan for the ICC Champions Trophy, citing the same security reasons, despite being assured a presidential-level security by the PCB.
Pakistan, by fighting for Bangladesh, led the case of weaker contestants in the game of cricket who are prone to the bigwig bullying – and quite successfully at that. The ICC, literally coming down on its knees, had to agree to compensate Bangladesh for the monetary loss inflicted due to its ouster from the World Cup that is being jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka. Pakistan has indeed set the ball rolling as to the need for much-needed reform in the context of cricket governance, besides sending a strong signal against attempts to weaponise the game of gentlemen for petty political gains. By the way, there is a bigger, strategic takeaway too: Pakistan, in the process, has won back Bangladesh.
