“I have seen him since he was 17,” said Sunil Gavaskar after adding his name to the signatories who have requested the Pakistani government to treat their fellow cricket great Imran Khan with dignity. Languishing in jail for two-and-a-half years, the champion all-rounder is a victim of his country’s unforgiving politics, a system he once mastered, manipulated and helped harden as leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and then as Prime Minister. But the appeal steers clear of politics. It, instead, speaks the language of fraternity that binds those who have shared the arena. It’s about a code that’s elemental to athletes – play tough, argue occasionally, even sledge, but respect and learn from the other side.
Gavaskar’s former teammate Kapil Dev is also among the signatories. At a time when relations between India and Pakistan are at an all-time low, and rivalry on the field has been annexed by political sentiments, the plea from two of the greatest to have donned the country’s colours reminds us that sport also creates another community. Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Imran Khan learnt the game at a time when players would often share meals and travel together. They would observe each other at practice and share notes about pitch conditions. An unwritten camaraderie was forged out of facing the relentless public scrutiny that the India-Pakistan rivalry inevitably brought.
In fact, in the early part of Gavaskar’s career — when a 17-year old Imran was trying to make his way to the Pakistan team – the Indian opener shared a dressing room with Pakistan players along with his teammates Bishen Singh Bedi and Farokh Engineer. When the subcontinental neighbours were fighting the 1971 war, players from India and Pakistan were part of a Rest of the World assembled by the West Indian legend Gary Sobers to take on Australia. Pakistan was represented by Zaheer Abbas, like Gavaskar new to international cricket, the leg-spinning all-rounder Intikhab Alam and the pace bowler Asif Masood. “Almost every evening we would go out for a meal to a restaurant owned by a Pakistani. The owner would hear reports from various radio news bulletins and write them down on a paper napkin and give it to Intikhab. Inti would barely glance at it, crumple it up and throw it away,” Gavaskar would write later in his memoir, Sunny Days. At the same time, Bedi was worried because “his hometown Amritsar was close to the Pakistan border”.
Former players are not diplomats, but they are custodians of precious memory. Gavaskar and Imran Khan have often spoken of their mutual admiration. During the 1982-1983 series, when his team was walloped by Pakistan led by Imran Khan, Gavaskar was asked at a press conference the best way to play the fast bowler, then at the peak of his prowess. The Indian captain, reportedly, responded in his characteristically self-deprecatory manner: “From the sight screen”.
Such words may seem out of step in times when sport is reduced to the blunt arithmetic of the final score. Yet, Gavaskar was doing something larger than deflecting a difficult question. By acknowledging the near unplayable quality of his Pakistani counterpart, he was affirming a deeper ethic of the game — recognising the other side’s greatness in defeat.
The medium pacer whom Gavaskar had first seen as a teenager was now a tearaway fast bowler. He had mastered late swing at high pace. To this writer, Khan setting fields like a chess master and then walking back languidly to his run-up, only to charge rhythmically to the bowling crease, was an introduction to the beauty of fast bowling. He unsettled batsman of great pedigree, including G R Vishwanath — the inswinger that tailed in sharply left very little room for the famed wrist adjustment his game was built on
Along with Mohinder Amarnath, Gavaskar stood tall. In his autobiography written just after the 82-83 series, Khan writes that the Indian captain was always difficult to dismiss.
Five years later, the Indian legend was to play what Imran Khan describes as the greatest innings he had ever seen. On a snake pit of a Bangalore pitch in which only one other batsman made a 50, Gavaskar, playing his last test match, battled for five-and-a-half hours in the fourth innings to score 96.
Yet, Gavaskar may not even have played that series in which he became the first cricketer to score 10,000 runs in tests. Much later, he recalled telling Khan that he planned to retire after the 1986 series against England. But the Pakistani great threw him a challenge: “You can’t retire now. Pakistan is coming to India next year, and I want to beat India in India. If you aren’t part of that team, it won’t be the same. Come on, let’s have one last tilt against each other.”
When Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, and other cricketers issue an appeal for Imran Khan, it’s this shared history that they are evoking. Cricket was once part of India-Pakistan diplomacy. It no longer is. But neighbours cannot be wished away. In the cricketers’ appeal lies a larger message. People-to-people contact may not ease tensions between the two countries. But lived experiences do temper absolutism. In moments of tension, there are reservoirs of goodwill waiting to be tapped.
The writer is senior associate editor, The Indian Express. kaushik.dasgupta@expressindia.com
