NEW DELHI: Miffed with the docile
pitch in the drawn Ahmedabad Test against Sri Lanka, feisty Indian off-spinner
Harbhajan Singh on Saturday said such batting-friendly tracks would kill
cricket’s longest format.

“Such pitches will kill Test cricket. It’s
a free ticket to batsmen and offer no contest,” Harbhajan said.

The
Motera track has drawi flak from all quarters and both captains Mahendra Singh
Dhoni and Kumar Sangakkara said they expected the pitch to offer some assistance
to the bowlers on the last two days.

The ‘battathons’ of Motera are
now in public domain but the bigger picture of pitches in India ought to make
cricket administrators sit up and take notice.

Seven of the last 12
Tests in India have been draws. One triple century, six double and as many as 32
Test centuries have been hit.

One score in excess of 700, three each
of 600 and 500 runs and no less than six scores of 400 and more have been
managed.

The bowlers understandably have groaned under the strain. It
has not mattered if the likes of Dale Steyn, Andrew Flintoff, Shoaib Akhtar or
Muthiah Muralitharan have been in operation.

Bowlers now have genuine
concerns for their careers in India, said Harbhajan.

Despite his 2
for 189 from 48 overs at Motera, Harbhajan is not overtly concerned about his
own well-being as he has picked up 54 wickets from these 12 Tests against
batting sides such as Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, England and Sri
Lanka.

His 216 wickets from 43 Tests at home at an average of 27.40
with 17 five-wicket and four 10-wicket hauls is still very
impressive.

“It’s not me alone. At least I bowled on the second and
third day (of the Motera Test). The best match-winner in the history of the game
(Murali) was struggling to go past the bat even on the fifth afternoon,” said
Harbhajan with palpable concern.

“It doesn’t matter if the pitch is
not spinner-friendly. It would be alright even if it helps seamers alone. But
bowlers need to be in business. They shouldn’t be there to just serve the
batsmen,” he added.

Indian captain Dhoni has already said he wouldn’t
like to play on wickets such as Motera’s.

KARACHI: Uncertainty still looms large
over Misbah-ul-Haq’s tour to New Zealand after the Pakistan Cricket Board said
it would wait till the first Test to decide whether to send the senior batsman
there as Younis Khan’s replacement.

Pakistan captain for the series
Mohammad Yousuf wanted Misbah to boost the team’s batting department after
regular skipper Younis’ opted out of the three Test series for a break.

However, Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Ejaz Butt and chief
selector Iqbal Qasim on Friday met in Lahore and decided that there was no need
to send any replacement for Younis to New Zealand at this stage and will take a
call on this matter after the first Test starting November 24 in Dunedin.

“We have already sent 17 players to New Zealand and even if we
decide to send Misbah he would not be able to reach there in time for the first
Test because of visa and other travel formalities,” Qasim, a former Test spinner
said.

“So we have decided to wait and see how things go in the first
Test and feel if there is a necessity to send a replacement for Younis then we
will consider sending Misbah. But at this stage we don’t think there is any need
to send anyone to New Zealand,” he said.

However on returning home
from London, Butt had told reporters that Misbah would be joining the team for
the second Test.

Meanwhile, sources in the PCB said that although
Butt had agreed to Yousuf’s request to send Misbah, he changed his mind after
the selectors expressed their unhappiness over the batsman’s decision to play
league cricket in Bangladesh midway through a premier domestic tournament.

The sources said the selectors were also unhappy with Abdul Razzaq
and Rana Naved for insisting on going to Bangladesh during the Quaid-e-Azam
trophy.

“The selectors feel that any player who is not willing to
give priority to the Quaid Trophy should not be given preferential treatment,”
the source added.

With his ‘Mumbai for all’
statement, Tendulkar finally took a political stand, striking a chord with Ali
and Owens. But what is it that deters our sportsmen from being politically
outspoken?

After keeping quiet for two decades on anything that
appeared even remotely sensitive, last week Sachin Tendulkar delivered his
version of Ali’s I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong remark.
“Mumbai belongs to India, that’s how I look at it. I’m extremely
proud to be a Maharashtrian, but I am an Indian first,” said Tendulkar.

The Mumbai-for-all remark was a departure from all those years of
silence. And it’s not just Tendulkar. If Indian sports stars have a common
trait, it’s being apolitical. So why did he take this figurative leap that
evening? No one can answer that except Tendulkar. But whatever the cause, the
remark got the Shiv Sena chief all worked up. He warned Tendulkar “to keep off
the political pitch” for his own well-being. Tendulkar may have angered Bal
Thackeray, but with his one statement he aligned himself with the Muhammad Ali
and the Jesse Owens of the sporting world. His words became representative of
larger constituencies. And by speaking his mind, many say, he reinvented
himself.

Tendulkar’s silence, and now his statement, only
reiterates an abiding question: why has India, which has seen wars and riots,
battled communalism and casteism, failed to produce a sports icon of defiance?
For all the sportsmen and women who have come from humble backgrounds and
oppressed classes, why have we not produced any symbol of protest? Why
don’t we have an Ali?

“This is a major failure of Indian
sports,” says sociologist Ashis Nandy. “During the colonial times we were
brainwashed into believing that sports was apolitical in nature. That it was not
right to let politics enter sports.” And even after Independence, Nandy says, we
didn’t change. “The only politics which seemed valid to us was the
politics of nationalism. Apart from the time when India refused to play with
South Africa because of apartheid, we’ve never been political,” he says.

In 1975, when the Emergency was clamped, “writers, artists, social
scientists protested” but bureaucrats and sportsmen kept away. “Sportspersons
did not open their mouths during the anti-Sikh riots or during the Gujarat
riots,” says Nandy.

But sportsmen steering away from politics is
perhaps a trend that’s not limited to India. Says Prof Vinay Lal, lecturer
of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Of
Cricket, Guiness and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture: “It is true
that our sportsmen and sportswomen have never taken strong stands on political
matters, but I would say that this is by and large the case all over the world.
The case of Muhammad Ali might seem different but Ali had converted to Islam,
and, in some respects, had already become marginal to American society. Even
without the conversion, let us not forget that as a black man Ali already stood
at the margins, and therefore was emboldened to take some risks”.

Lal says the example of Jesse Owens too has to be viewed within
broader geopolitics. Owens became a living repudiation of Nazi racial ideology
and “was almost thrust into becoming a political symbol”. Lal adds: “I think we
would be hardpressed to find white sportsmen and sportswomen in the West who
have been spokespersons, eloquent or otherwise, against injustice,
discrimination, and racism.”

Both Ali and Jesse Owens became symbols
of the fight against injustice and racial oppression with the “knowledge that
they had, or would have, a world audience”.

Indian sportspersons, on
the other hand, lack that visibility on a global platform. “I suspect also that
they have only in recent years come into money in a big way, and they are
probably loath to jeopardise their commercial interests by appearing to take
political positions,” says Lal.

Ace shooter Abhinav Bindra agrees.
Sportspersons need the support of the establishment. “Trying to support even
non-sports issues could come in the way of your progress. Let’s focus on
producing world class sports icons. When we do that, hopefully we’ll be
able to produce sports icons of defiance,” he says.

Social scientist
Shiv Visvanathan points out that Indian sports may not have a symbol of protest
at present but it has had sportspersons in the past who have spoken their minds.
“There was Ranjit Singh and Duleep Singh, who objected to Bodyline. Lala
Amarnath too. But that was during the colonial era,” says Visvanathan. “None of
our sportsmen had strong political views after that. There are cricketers and
others now who wear a black band for AIDS and tiger conservation but
that’s social work and not a political statement.” Cricket, in particular,
and sports in general in India, is a sign of mobility rather than a search for
justice, Visvanathan says.

“When Mohun Bagan beat the British
football team (East Yorkshire Regiment, 1911 IFA Shield final), it was a
political statement against the Queen. In 1936, when Dhyan Chand’s team
beat the Nazis, it was a statement. Post Independence there were no statements.
It started changing from 1960. Commercialisation killed it,” insists
Visvanathan.

Of course, Sunil Gavaskar refusing the MCC membership
in 1990 because a steward had once returned him from the gates of Lord’s,
too can be considered to be a political statement of sorts, but it was Sourav
Ganguly’s shirt-waving on the Lord’s balcony that captured the
imagination, post-Independence.

“He understood the symbolism of
politics,” says Visvanathan of Ganguly.

“Taking his shirt off at the
Natwest Trophy was a political statement against the Whites. By removing his
shirt, Ganguly said we got a six-pack mentality of cricket. Bhutia is another
example but he is a meek fighter and sports is anyway regionalised in India.
Hockey is not big enough now. It will not capture the imagination if some hockey
player was to revolt. So Indian sports is a politics of a silent movie. There is
no speech involved here,” adds the sociologist.