Cricket and Conflict!

Apart from having identical letters of the English alphabet at the beginning and the end, Cricket and Conflict have a lot in common. Or should I say they have had a very interesting relationship, here in Kashmir. We use almost identical terms for a cricket match and for a conflict situation. A batsman runs himself out while as a Surakhsa karmi runs out of ammunition. Others terms include fightback (by a losing side), encounter (between two teams), victim (of a bowler or a bullet/pellet/pepper gas), boundary (of a country or a stadium), score (of the runs or the injured), follow on (of the innings or of the ‘story’ by media). Owing to this interrelated lingo, I sometimes get confused whether I am reading the sports page or the front page of the newspaper. And I wonder, is it the ‘conflictisation’ of cricket or the ‘cricketisation’ of the conflict? I’ll go for the later!

All through my life, I have been watching boys (and men) play cricket on link roads and the inter-district roads throughout Kashmir on the conflict days. And conflict days are those when people wear the conflict on their sleeves rather than keeping it in their hearts – the days of Curfew, Hartals and other related ingredients of the conflict! So much so that a friend of mine wonders, “given the frequency of hartals and curfews in Kashmir it should have produced a lot of world class cricketers by now!” True that because when we play cricket on a metalled road (or that with potholes!) we can learn cricket better than anyone else. Such a ‘pitch’ has all those ingredients which usually pose a problem to Indian cricketers/players. Their batsmen can’t score on hard and bouncy surface. Their bowlers can’t take wickets on such surfaces. So, such ‘pitches’ or roads do qualify as a moment to think over, for the Indian ‘team’ – be it a cricket match at the WACA pitch in Australia or one of those pitched battles in the by lanes of Kashmir! 

Usually, it is a cricket match which decides which way of the conflict you stand, in Kashmir. As it happened, a goodwill General sensed the nabz of Kashmiris right and came up with an idea.  This goodwill army man delved on the idea of Premier Leauge-ising the Kashmiri Cricket. Hence, the Kashmir Cricket League was born. As a result this goodwill General, who happened to have a well receptive Muslim name, was seen more in Cricket grounds, cultural programs and flagging off wattan ki saer programs than in war room meetings!  It was supposed to be an attempt to bring the Kashmiri youth to the ‘mainstream’ – as if they were flowing in some wrong stream of Jehlum (towards Pakistan?)! It was an attempt to take the youth off the roads – where they were either engaged in cricket or stone-bullet (or stone-pellet) chor-police! Well, it did have a good result – Parvez Rasool, who played for the Anantnag Arsenals in the Kashmir Premier League went on to play for India A, BCCI President’s XI and also played alongside Yuvraj Singh for North Zone in Deodhar Trophy. And according to some ‘sources’ he may be ‘fast-tracked’ into the Indian team! This – apparently to cricketise the loci standi of the youth about the conflict!

But, there are always some repercussions to devious ideas. Only recently there was a ‘fightback’ from the apparently losing side – they claimed 5 wickets in quick succession before valiantly running themselves out! They even had a hashtag on twitter for this fightback - #KashmirFightsBack – as if it really were a test match going on.  Hence, television diarrhoeics like Goswami were forced to follow on (on the story!). As I said Cricket and Conflict have a very interesting relationship here.

Now, the goodwill Generals may well be ruing the fact that they inculcated the spirit of cricket in the jawans (jawans = youth, or otherwise!) so much so that they see a cricketer in everyone with a kit bag and a track-suit. In the process they even forget to save their own wickets!

Or, who knows, maybe they are staring at an innings defeat!

This write-up first appeared in the March 19 2013 edition of Kashmir Reader.