THE DRAVIDIAN RAJ - a review of The World Cup 1996 (Dawn Magazine, Friday, March 29, 1996)

Dawn Magazine, Friday, March 29, 1996

THE DRAVIDIAN RAJ

By Adil Ahmad

Well folks, if you thought you had heard the last of the sixth World Cup 1996, think again. If wishes were horses beggars would ride and the poor of this world would preen with pride.

The Lankan 'Lion' who had been out begging the 'Aussie Kangaroo' and the Windie 'Kingfisher' to play on his soil, went back to his island jungle riding a high horse as high could be. It proved to be an outrageous action-packed affair full of suspense and sound and fury and raw emotion.

The World Cup 1996 came with a warning sign for the faint-hearted and a promise of untold fame and fortune for those who would dare to defy the odds for an ecstatic island population desperately in search of some good news. As the Tamil Tiger licked his wounds and made common cause with the Lankan 'Lion', there was dancing in the streets of Sri Lanka.

Arjuna Ranatunga (Raging Rana, Tubby Tunga, and Ageless Arjuna to his legion of loving admirers) remained remarkably composed and unruffled in the face of his team's wonderful dream come true.

The Lankan 'Lion' laid to rest the myth of Aryan supremacy. The Dravidians had come of age and had conquered the last bastion of Anglo-Saxon imperialism in a quiet and competent manner.

Tallyho! Tubby Tunga! And 'tallyho' Arif Abbasi! Thank you for some fabulous cricket both on and off the field. The sight of you bravely battling the gatecrashers on the day of the Final was so very heartening, even though there was little that could be done. Pakistan should charge the event managers IMG a hefty consultancy fee for providing them with a priceless experience in crisis management!

It is rumoured that bookies are offering 10,000 to 1 odds on the chances of IMG ever returning to manage an event in Pakistan. Thank God for small mercies. And while Clive Lloyd may hold a dim view of the calypso cricket image his team enjoys, the Indian 'kingfisher' scored some prized catches, Courtney Browne's faux pas notwithstanding. At 2000 to 1 odds the Indian (and I don’t mean West Indian) 'kingfisher' humoured his bookies and the Kenyans. The Kenyans then went on to humour the Lankans in grand style even as the Windies whirlwind played havoc with the odds once again, laying waste the Aussie favoruites.

But fate would conspire with the 'masterblaster' and the Indian 'kingfisher', and the humiliated Lankan 'Lion' would roar its way to even greater heights of glory.

At the end of the day the 'WWCC96' turned out to be a thoroughly exhilarating, thought provoking experience, Pakistan's Bangalore campaign notwithstanding. And who says the Bangalore campaign was a disaster? Calcutta was a disaster, both for India and for the game of cricket. In Bangalore everybody won. India won, quite literally. Cricket won quite definitely.

Pakistan 'won' even before the game had begun. The day Pakistan's greenshirted 'stormtroopers' landed defiantly behind enemy lines in the full glare of the world's media, the battle had already been won quite comprehensively. By losing the quarter-final match Pakistan captured the hearts and minds of the Indians.

Pakistan may have lost a cricket match to India, but only after ruthlessly savaging the Indian bowling in the first 10 overs. Unawed by the fact that they were in hostile conditions, Aamir Sohail and Saeed Anwar cut, drove and hooked in a manner which cast a pall of deathly silence over a cent percent partisan spectatorship.

Wasim Akram's absence from the field, as also his earring, can be construed and misconstrued in a thousand different ways. It was a show of confidence bordering on arrogance. Letting a wet behind the ears swashbuckling greenhorn lead the side into battle in what was being billed as the 'mother of all encounters', was a masterpiece strategic move in a war of nerves by a seasoned  campaigner who had already conquered Melbourne. The earring, while ruffling the feathers of the fastidious and conservative at home, symbolised the rebel in the Pakistani spirit and automatically drew the sympathy and endorsement of rebels worldwide - in an age where rebellion to decadent status quo has gained the universal approval of the masses.

We went to Bangalore to prove a point, and we proved that point in admirable style as Aamir Sohail faced down Venkatesh Prasad and then threw his wicket in utter contempt of the proceedings. No cricketer doubts what Waqar Younis could have done to the Indian batting lineup. Chewed them up and spat them out in his sleep. Yet he let them thrash his dreaded lethal doses all over the place.

Azhuruddin had already won the World Cup for the Subcontinent when he let the Indo-Pak team in a show of solidarity with the Lankan Lion. Bal Thackeray is right. There can never be a game of conventional cricket between India and Pakistan while the two continue to view each other as enemy number one.

This was not cricket. This was highpowered, never-wracking, stupendous diplomacy which no foreign office anywhere could contemplate let alone achieve, ping pong diplomacy notwithstanding. If Wasim Akram and his shocktroopers have today become the victims of an abusive, stone-throwing, over-reactive, irrational fringe then it is a price which they must pay for the privilege of being at the cutting edge.

Pakistan accomplished its 'mission impossible' much before the day its gladiators landed in Bangalore. Given the intolerance, escalating tensions, and a ruinous indifference to the right path, Pakistan forcefully, and sometimes forcibly, brought the Subcontinent to a common platform to put on what can rightfully be called the greatest, most controversial show on earth. Eat your heart out, Atlanta!

The drawing-rooms of the world will continue to resound with the chatter of the chattering classes for a long, long time to come. Whether it be the on-again, off-again stripping of Sushmita Sen; Or the Queen of Hearts' secret dash to greet King Khan on his mission of mercy; Or the rise of Indian nationalism in an ugly manifestation of bad sportsmanship in Calcutta; Or the call by a radical segment for a comprehensive ban on the playing of cricket in Pakistan; Or Javed Miandad's strenuous huffing and puffing on the boundary line; Or the 50-feed-long cricket bat which weighed in at five tons and cost 300,000 rupees and appears to have quietly slipped out of the news; Or the Mik Jagger mania; Or the jostling of Benazir on an overcrowded podium as she struggled to cope with her roles of awed cricket fan, popular leader, prime minister, and chief guest on the day of the Final; Or the manner in which the victorious Tubby Tunga clawed and clambered his way to the well deserved trophy: Or how the rain waited so patiently in deference to the Final before coming pouring down at the end of it; Or the way the Lankan Lion was denied permission to take the customary victory lap around the stadium (something distinctly fishy there)? Or the Australian captain's off the cuff remark about how his boys could never hold their catches in Pakistan, the 'WWCC96' achieved its mandate in grand style leaving behind a very tough act to follow.