Why stadiums need a sense of place

There are many bad things about the new football stadium in Sao Paulo where the opening game of the World Cup was staged on Thursday (starting with its existence, given it was created for political reasons, when there were at least two existing stadiums in the city that with a lick of paint and minimal upgrading could have done the job perfectly well), but there is one thing that it gets emphatically right, and that is the fact that there are gaps in the corners.

There is a one-tier bowl, plus permanent second tiers down the long sides of the ground, with temporary stands at the two ends. In the corners are the big screens and television boxes, but they are low, so you can see through, and what that means is that you get a sense of where you are. After hours cooped up in the air-conditioned tent of the media, there's something refreshing about being able to see downtown Sao Paulo, shady hills in the background, a reminder that there is a world beyond the World Cup. When Brazil scored, you could see fireworks bursting in the evening sky.

This, of course, is an area in which cricket has a huge advantage over football. Because the stands tend to be lower, there is a constant sense of life going on outside, from Lumley Castle at Chester-le-Street to Table Mountain at Newlands, to Henry Blofeld's beloved buses passing Archbishop Tennyson's School outside The Oval.

That gives cricket stadiums an identity, a sense of place, that is vital but is all too often missing from football, with its identikit modern bowls that reach to the skies. And that's just thinking of the aesthetic, without considering what impact buildings or trees may have on atmospheric conditions: variety is good.

Old football grounds still occasionally have that sense of place. At Ninian Park, until two years ago the home of Cardiff City, for instance, you used to be able to see trains passing one corner of the ground. Roker Park, once the home of Sunderland, was one of many grounds that gave a glimpse of the terraced housing that surrounded them. At Tannadice, home of Dundee United, and Upton Park, home of West Ham United, there are flats that have a view into the stadium. They were or are grounds rooted in their communities. At the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon, home of this year's Champions League final, the castle is visible in the distance.

One of my favourite experiences in football was covering an Asian Cup game between Japan and Saudi Arabia in Saida, Lebanon, in 2000, at a time when it seemed the balance of power in Asian football was shifting from west (represented by the Saudis, winners of three of the previous four tournaments) to east (represented by Japan, who had won on home soil in 1992). To the right of the high main stand, the Mediterranean crashed against the rocks and a Crusader fort. Straight ahead, between the mountains that formed the western edge of the Bekaa Valley, a fairground was silhouetted against a purple sky in which lightning flickered. The scene was set for something dramatic, and what followed was the Gotterdammerung of Saudi football as they lost 4-1.

The backdrop added to the occasion. Too often, though, modern football stadiums reach up to the sky. In the homogenised world of the World Cup, it can be impossible to know where you are. I remember in 2006, in Germany, the sense of panic as I tried to add my byline and couldn't recall if I was in Cologne or Frankfurt. Thankfully FIFA, as though recognising the potential problems, add the names of the host cities on a hoarding by the halfway line.

But most of the time one football stadium is very much like another, particularly during major tournaments. The modern football ground is two or three tiers of plastic seats, with very little to distinguish them in terms of the angle of the seats or the distribution of the stands. They are comfortable and have good sight lines, but they are often generic, interchangeable.

Cricket grounds still have their idiosyncrasies, even if modern redevelopment - Adelaide perhaps most obviously - risks removing them. Of course it's understandable that executives want to pack in as many people as possible and maximise the returns on corporate hospitality, but at the same time cricket cannot lose what make its grounds unique - from the mountains of Dharamsala to the volcano at Pukekura to the trees at Kandy to the beach at St Vincent to the cathedral at Worcester. After all, without its quirks, cricket is nothing.

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Teams cannot risk tours to Pakistan

An armoured vehicle is patrolling a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Armed police guide national teams through streets that are cordoned off in this enthralling city. Poverty and wealth are uneasy neighbours, the fuse of a powder keg ready to explode. Months of demonstrations, of civil unrest, of violence and protests, have been an unexpected build-up. Nonetheless a government struggling for control is welcoming the world and promising a safe passage for the planet's richest sportsmen and their wide-eyed supporters. This is perhaps how sport should be, crashing directly into the rocks of social division. Brazil, in football, is the prime example of sport as national expression, a representation of the ambitions of Brazilian people within a complex sociopolitical environment.

The World Cup, this glorious showcase for the beautiful game, was never in doubt. No security issue is considered too hazardous, no stadium is declared too unready. High-profile international sport in a volatile country is possible. We all know that it is. A successful tournament may even heal some of the social wounds and conflict that now threaten Brazil's favourite sport.

A similar argument once seemed reasonable when discussing international cricket teams touring Pakistan. The security threats were containable. The benefits to Pakistan cricket and society in general far outstripped the remote, almost non-existent, risk of harm.

Three incidents destroyed any such logic. In 2002, a bomb exploded outside the Pearl Continental Hotel* in Karachi. Bombs are no longer unusual in Karachi, but this bomb detonated when the New Zealand cricket team was staying at the hotel. The Kiwis immediately returned home. Six years later and several hundred miles to the south east, a group of young men of Pakistani origin terrorised Mumbai. Cricket was an irrelevance, but cricketing relations between India and Pakistan became collateral damage.

Pakistan cricket, threatened with isolation in 2009, welcomed friends from Sri Lanka to demonstrate the safety of Pakistan as an international venue. Presidential-level security was offered, although this was moot, given the safety of Benazir Bhutto had been impossible to guarantee two years earlier. In the middle of the second Test in Lahore, near the Gaddafi Stadium, the home of Pakistan cricket, Sri Lanka's team bus was attacked, security men and bystanders were killed, and five players were injured. Sri Lanka went home and took international cricket with them.

Rather than sadness, it has become a blessed relief that international teams no longer risk tours to Pakistan. The risk of harm to players has far outstripped any possible benefits. No sport, no public morale boost, no symbolic hand of friendship deserves such folly. Ireland's pursuit of Test status and international acceptance does not require a suicide mission to Pakistan, where an alarming level of violence and terrorism is now the norm.

Other countries are also unsettled. Take Brazil, for example. But any promises of security from the Pakistan Cricket Board or the government are worthless. We saw it with Sri Lanka's cricketers and their presidential-level security. We saw it again at Karachi's airport. High-profile international sport is now impossible in Pakistan. It was once hard to imagine that cricketers could be terrorist targets but they seem obvious ones now. This is the moment, the tipping point, the point of no return.

A recently published report on urbanisation in Pakistan suggests that a third of Karachi is controlled by the Taliban. Rapid urbanisation of Karachi, other cities, and even some rural areas in Pakistan will create a fertile environment for more extremism unless measures are adopted now, says the report by the Wilson Center. Some of these measures are immediate but others are deep-rooted and long-term. Nothing will change in Pakistan fast, and by 2050 the Pakistani population will have reached 380 million. How is it possible for security to return quickly to Pakistan under these circumstances? Even if the correct strategies are adopted now, the benefits may not be realised for another two or three generations. Pakistan's security crisis has sunk so low, its sociopolitical circumstances are now so out of control, that there is no quick fix, no guarantee of safety.

Cricket may be doomed in the short- and even medium term, but Pakistanis are a resilient people, as their current cricketing exile has proved. Any prescription for recovery is a painful one but must centre on developing Pakistan's international base in the UAE to keep the national team competitive. Pakistan should also look again at England as an alternative home venue where support is strong.

Reinvigorating domestic cricket is a second strategic strand, so that it develops players, attracts sponsors and helps sustain the cricket board. Players who have scored centuries in Pakistan's domestic cricket go to play club cricket in England and struggle.

Finally, players must seize opportunities for development in other cricket nations, and the PCB must not be an obstacle here. If other national boards are genuinely willing to help Pakistan, why don't they allow a Pakistan A team to enter their domestic first-class competitions, for example? Clearly the long-term solutions are sociopolitical ones but the PCB needs to take a pragmatic view and accept the grim reality of Pakistan's ongoing security crisis.

Urging international teams to tour Pakistan is a futile exercise, a public-relations stunt, a show of misplaced bravado. The salvation of Pakistan cricket relies on other, more urgent and painstaking survival strategies.

Credits : Kamran Abbas 

How cricket can remain relevant during the football World Cup!!

Keep your chin up, cricket. Just because it's World Cup football season, there's no reason for you to be down in the mouth. While it may seem at times that all the attention is being lavished elsewhere over the coming days, you will always remain, like a less obviously successful sibling, special in the eyes of those who claim to love you. Here are a few things to remember that should help boost any flagging self-esteem and help you remain relevant over the course of the next month or so.

They needed a cricketer to kick off their World Cup

Did you catch the opening ceremony few days ago? You will have felt no small measure of pride, then, when that hideous TV "ball" peeled back to reveal, in varying states of undress and ready to perform the World Cup song, Jennifer Lopez, Claudia Leitte, and Herschelle Gibbs. While it's safe to say that Gibbs was better as a batsman than in his new incarnation as a singer (indeed, the moniker "Pitbull" would have been more apt while he was bludgeoning attacks in his prime), and let's not even talk about those trousers he was wearing (goddamn, son), the fact that he had such a central role to help kick off such a major event should nevertheless make you feel good about yourself, cricket.

India v England
With due respect to the football World Cup, and to a lesser extent Sri Lanka, the biggest draw of the summer is obviously England v India. English football may as well come to terms with the harsh truth: this tour still represents England's best bet at winning some silverware this summer in any sport. So don't miss the ceremonial Losing of the First Test by the tourists, and watch, riveted, as they play their traditional game of catch-up for the remainder of the series. If all this isn't enough to excite you, then I have just two words for you that should get you sufficiently pumped: Stuart Binny.

We have Test cricket and they don't
To borrow a phrase from Braveheart: they may take all the TV ratings over the summer, but they can never take away the sanctity of Test cricket. Granted, Spain v Netherlands tomorrow does have a certain appeal to it, but hey, it just so happens that we have West Indies playing New Zealand not all that much farther away. Spoilt for choice is what cricket fans are when it comes to their viewing pleasure. Truly, there really is nothing quite like the sight of "real" cricketers resplendent in their traditional whites, the atmosphere punctuated lazily by that one-of-a-kind sound of bat meeting willow, amplified as it resounds off the cavernous, traditionally half-empty stadium. Ah, Test cricket these days. You just have to breathe it in.

By asking what all the fuss is about
Oh, football, it's cute that you're excited about your World Cup. I remember a time when cricket used to have a World Cup once every four years as well. Now, due to the fact that we have more formats in the game than we do months in the year, it would seem that we have one every few days or so. How lucky are we, right? Right. World Cups are so passe. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, football. Except, I bet you don't even smoke a pipe. You don't even wear a tweed cap, do you? God, I feel sorry for you.

It's not like it's the IPL 
Cricket, you'll be the first to admit that the sound of a football World Cup in Brazil does carry a certain golden aura about it. But you will also be the first to just as quickly admit that it doesn't matter, because it's not like it's the IPL. They don't even have cheerleaders at their games. And what kind of crowning event of a sport doesn't have an announcer on hand screaming into the crowds the names of the two teams playing every ten seconds or so? How is one to know who is playing who? No wonder football games are so noisy: uninstructed, the rudderless fans simply don't know when to express their appreciation, and so resort to simply making noise all the time. Oh, and not one cutaway from live action to a celebrity in the crowd struggling to express themselves through the plastic cast of their faces? Yeah, file this one under not impressed.

No controversies about where to play
We don't have any controversies of the type FIFA is struggling with at the moment with regards to whether or not to hold the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, or with the protests against holding the current World Cup in Brazil itself. We just hold our World Cups in India whenever the BCCI demands it and everyone is just fine with that arrangement, or else. In fact, we do many things whenever the BCCI demands it. It's a simple, one-stop solution to a great many of life's problems. You should try it sometime, football.

Credit : R Rajkumar

The future will be at Lord's !!!

Lord's is to be given a £55 million revamp to get it ready for the 2019 World Cup after the MCC signed off on plans to spruce up the Home of English Cricket. Could the following be part of the development?

* Hi-tech biomechanics facility for reprogramming of the actions of young England fast bowlers.

* Injury rehab clinic for young England fast bowlers.

* Media training facility for Team England players, made from featureless brushed steel, no windows.

* Nutritional science area, with grain silo for team quinoa, special hothouse for goji berries, isotonic-recovery-        drink lake.

* Spirit of Cricket IMAX 3D cinema, so England players can study Cheating Foreigners doing unconscionable            things in contravention of the Spirit of Cricket ^TM- all in glorious IMAX 3D.

* Playing area to be shrunk to make T20 matches more exciting, perhaps to around 15m from pitch to boundary.

* To attract young local types as part of community outreach scheme, MCC have insisted on facilities for the sorts    of sports they understand that the young people of today are keen on, including 100 Real Tennis courts, show-      jumping arena, ballroom, hare-coursing track, bear-baiting pit, witch-ducking pond and roller disco.

* Revenue-increasing features to allow ground to be used more often, including football stadium, gig venue,            secondary football stadium.

* Steward barracks, with shooting ranges to train stadium guards to spot a patron without a tie at 100 metres.

* England team practice area with state-of-the-art gym, running track, aerobics suite, climbing wall, boxing ring.      No space for cricket nets.

* Welcome suite and acclimatisation area for new imports to English cricket team, with Afrikaans-English                translation facilities.

* Improved food court, with more affordable food options on Test-match days, including some lunches that may      not require a credit cheque/bank-approved personal loan.

Alan's sports books, all illustrated by the brilliant Beach

Credit and Copyright by : Alan Tyers

Who would be a player-umpire????

Wearing an ill-fitting white coat, the pockets filled with stones, coins, or even one of those shiny metal counters, the amateur umpire bravely takes the field. Despite the club cricketer preparing himself for the summer toiling in the nets, scouring the sports shops for that magical piece of kit that will transform his season, none of us have read an updated rule book. Or, more importantly, psychologically readied ourselves for the key decisions that can fracture friendships and team unity, and even start family feuds.

Although the word umpire derives from the Old French nompere - "not a peer", and thus able to pass judgement without bias - the village friendly is adjudicated by fellow players. In an Authors CC match last year our opening bat, Richard Beard, was struck in front and the subject of a bellowed appeal. His team-mate and fellow novelist Alex Preston was the judge. Paralysed by the dilemma of either dismissing his colleague or fending off the opposition, he chose debate: "Well," he addressed Richard. "Do you think you were out?" I can't recall if Richard had tucked his bat under his arm before the finger went up, but it was the first time I'd heard an umpire ask a batsman to adjudicate his own leg-before. Alex subsequently won the "Decision of the Season" award at our annual dinner.

I like to think there is a tacit agreement between club players, an unspoken contract that no bowler expects anything less than an utterly plumb leg-before to be judged out by one of his friends. There is nothing that causes more foreboding than a skipper who gets a crick in his neck walking back to the pavilion because he's glaring at the wicket, where you're already lobbying the opposition to support your gross error. "He was plumb, wasn't he?" you whimper. "I couldn't not give that." As your weakening voice trails off, so does your position in the batting order. And even if you're sure he was plumb, without the DRS, the path of a ball is eternally subjective.

The father-son umpire-player dynamic is not quite as straightforward. A sporting dad, fearing the slur of favouritism, may over-compensate, and the rap on son's pad accompanied by the squeak of an appeal is enough to send him packing. Then there are the father-son partnerships that are impregnable, where no plumb appeal or middle to first slip will dislodge son from the crease. And beware the batsman taking guard when son is bowling and dad is standing behind the stumps.

"How is that, Dad?"

"That's out, son."

By celebrating the bravery of the player-umpire, I'm certainly not dismissing the service of our professional guardians. Although technology has revealed the limits of the human eye in predicting the path of a 95mph projectile no bigger than an apple, our watching overlords will forever be essential to maintaining the spirit of the game.

If it wasn't for umpire Tony Crafter putting his body on the line between Australia and Pakistan in Perth in 1981, the bat-wielding Javed Miandad might have knocked off more than Dennis Lillee's headband. Only last month, during the Mumbai Indians versus Royal Challengers game did another flashpointnearly erupt into a Mount Vesuvius. Mitchell Starc bowled a sidewinder at Kieron Pollard as he backed out of facing the incoming delivery. Pollard retaliated by launching his bat. Thankfully neither Starc's ball nor Pollard's blade hit their target. It took both umpires to settle the remonstrating offenders - tempers neither Chris Gayle nor Virat Kohli could cool despite their best efforts at conflict resolution - and I wonder if a yellow-card system, similar to that in rugby, where players are suspended from the game in action, should be considered.

Although the abandonment of a North Leicestershire league game in the 1970s is not quite as high-profile as an IPL dust-up, it was a match that might have been completed with neutral umpires. My father told me that the usual verbals had already been exchanged, and once the batsman and bowler abruptly began trading blows, the players in the pavilion stormed the pitch and warred like vikings. Police were called, the teams fined and relegated, with lengthy bans for both captains. The only good that came from this battle was that my father was made skipper and took the team straight back into the division they had been demoted from.

I've heard exotic anecdotes of players killing umpires, and umpires killing players, but I've personally never seen anything more heated in the professional arena than Mike Gatting versus Shakoor Rana in 1987 in Faislabad. Gatting's finger-wagging was instrumental in changing the way games were officiated: "In some ways it was good for cricket, because neutral umpires came in immediately after that episode," Gatting said.

The importance of neutrality is recognised by the upper divisions of the amateur leagues, who send out armies of men in white coats every weekend. If it wasn't for these dedicated arbiters, the flask-carrying hobbyists who criss-cross the country from park minefield to village green, usually with little more than petrol money and a space reserved at the front of the tea line as payment, perhaps even more friendships would be ruined and pitch battles fought.

However, I'm still glad we can adjudicate our own matches. I enjoy walking out to the middle with the opening batsmen. I get to see how the wicket is playing, which end I might choose to bowl. True, I'm certainly a card-carrying member of the "bowler's union", that affiliation which allows me to be lenient with wides and secretly appreciate the jaffa ball that takes out off stump. And the umpire has the best view on the pitch - just reward for braving the impossible dilemma between sportsmanship and team spirit.

Cricket's twin towers of evil!!!!

Two prominent aspects of contemporary cricket are disheartening, to say the least. The first of them is the shadow cast by periodic revelations of skulduggery in the form of match-fixing, spot-fixing and the like. The second - that of the scourge of chucking, though extremely depressing, would be irrelevant were the first to continue to besmirch the game. For, what would be the point in watching cricket with legal, illegal or suspicious bowling actions, if some unseen hand can determine the course of an over, session or match?

For the game to continue to attract loyal cricket lovers who know its intricacies as well as its history, a massive clean-up operation needs to be urgently launched on both fronts. It will be a bright new dawn that opens to untainted cricket and pristine bowling actions that do not need scrutiny on the global stage because they have passed stringent tests at the junior level.

Illegal bowling actions are, however, far easier to eradicate than cricket corruption, but we must first acknowledge the problem. The ICC's cricket committee's admission (to go by recent news reports) that "there are a number of bowlers currently employing suspect actions in international cricket" is nothing short of a bad joke. How can that be with all the precise science of measuring the flex-ion of the bowler's arms at our command? How can chuckers or suspects survive state-of-the-art scrutiny into international cricket? Do the ICC and its members have no method of eliminating illegal bowling actions before bowlers graduate from domestic cricket?

To be fair to the committee, it confesses that the ICC's reporting and testing procedures are not adequately scrutinizing these bowlers. "It recommended that changes be considered to encourage umpires and referees to identify suspect bowlers with greater confidence, to use the expertise of the biomechanists working in this area to assume a greater role during the assessment process," says the committee, which has recommended "ongoing scrutiny of bowlers once they have been identified under the ICC procedures". One of the solutions proposed is the opening of illegal-action testing centers in more countries (over and above the current facility in Australia).

While the proposal has merit, the will to remove the menace of chucking is more crucial to results than the nature and efficacy of the measures recommended. Parochial considerations should not be allowed to stand in the way of cracking the problem. One way of ensuring this would be to have an expert committee comprising recently retired cricketers and umpires (supported if must be by biomechanists, preferably with some cricketing background) closely monitor bowling actions in a tournament like the IPL, where emerging players rub shoulders with international cricketers. Ideally, such scrutiny should be backed by the re-empowerment of umpires to no-ball offenders on the field. Unfortunately, that would be wishful thinking.

Without tough legislation, how can we ever prevent the random and deliberate violation of the arm-flexing limitations in force by a bowler whose action has been cleared but is bent on bending the rules to his advantage? (In this regard, I remember what an opponent told me after one of my team-mates went for 100 runs in 20 overs but claimed six wickets in the process in a Ranji Trophy match. He said he chucked exactly six deliveries in a long spell, but chucked each of them unplayable).

Coming to the other, larger, menace of corruption in cricket, it has been heartening to hear some of the most respected voices in the fraternity of cricketers speak out against it. The Fab Four of Indian cricket, for instance, continue to inspire us after their playing days by urging young cricketers to follow their own upright examples of honesty and integrity. They stood firmly together in the international arena in the face of constant attempts to sully the game by an ugly nexus between the cricket underworld, cricketers and others. Despite that, over the past decade or so, it has taken all our loyalty to the game and its sterling ambassadors to continue to believe in the purity of the game, in the midst of horrendous rum-ours flying all around us, including Lou Vincent's recent revelations.

An acquaintance I often ran into socially in the first decade of this century, an inveterate punter, enjoyed telling me that all ODIs were fixed. However absurd that sounded, he had the last laugh more than once when his pre-match predictions were bang on target. The recent horror stories may have their origins in ICL cricket, but are they the tip of a way more widespread iceberg? Was the punter acquaintance right after all?

Amid the gloom, it is perhaps time for the Kumbles, Tendulkars and Dravids of Indian cricket to lend their weight behind efforts to stamp out cricket corruption forever by doing more than the very laudable messages they have been putting out to all constituents of the game. They and their contemporaries must share all their thinking and knowledge on the subject with the investigating agencies and help them root out the evil permanently. It can be done. It was, in England - a couple of centuries ago, when it first raised its head.

Isn't it time Pakistanis were in the IPL??

The recently concluded IPL was capped by a final where the winning team chased down 200 runs quite comfortably. So let me begin this blog by planting my first marker right here: this wouldn't have happened had there been some Pakistani bowlers around.

I am not being entirely facetious here. The top three T20I wicket-takers of all time are active Pakistani players, and three Pakistani bowlers currently sit in the ICC's top ten for the format.

This year's tournament was the only time in five events that Pakistan's bowling failed to carry its misfiring batting to a WT20 semi-final (or better). And the only home ODI series India have lost in close to five years (and ten series; 11 if you include the last World Cup) is when Pakistan's attack came for a visit. Pakistani bowlers are some of the best in T20s, and they are some of the best when it comes to bowling in India.

It's a realisation that doesn't seem to have been completely lost on IPL teams. Both the iconic Ws of Pakistan's '90s are coaches in the IPL, with Wasim coaching the current champions and Waqar handling Dale Steyn and Co. for the Hyderabad Sunrisers. Dual-passport holder Azhar Mahmood has clocked several seasons, while the hapless Delhi side even brought in Imran Tahir for this edition, a Lahori leg-spinner who was similarly drafted in by a hapless South Africa side not too long ago.

Yet for six years now, the IPL has continued to do without Pakistani bowlers or batsmen (we don't mind them skipping on the wicketkeepers; we'd like to do the same). After an initial ban following the ghastly and tragic Mumbai attacks in 2008, Pakistani players were brought into the 2010 auction but went unsold. That frankly humiliating situation has now gone on since then.

There are two main reasons given for this exclusion, the first of which is security. This claim, which began with authentic concerns, feels largely ridiculous now. Apart from the four mentioned above, Ramiz Raja and Shoaib Akhtar have both been commentating through the IPL, and Pakistani umpires have been involved as well. Since there have been no issues with any of these people, it does sound odd to claim that similar security can't be provided to any Pakistani players playing for an IPL side. Moreover, since the attacks, a number of Pakistani actors and singers have made it to Indian screens, while a host of Pakistani writers and poets have been populating the region's many literature festivals, and yet the cricketers are still kept out.

The second reason given for the exclusion of Pakistani players is more sensitive and more wide-ranging. The ban/embargo on Pakistani players occurred as a direct consequence of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Since those attacks took place, the two states of India and Pakistan have continued to have differences on the prosecution of the perpetrators. In that context, it is understandable how the implicit ban on Pakistani cricketers could be part of a wider reality. Yet, with all due respect, even this claim rings slightly hollow now that a Pakistani side has already toured India once, and more importantly, now that the two countries' cricket boards have begun discussions on hosting no fewer than six bilateral series over the next nine years.

If anything, the presence of the Pakistani team in India held greater symbolic value than individual cricketers playing in the IPL would, and experience has shown that it went off without a hitch. Perhaps the greatest possible symbolic obstacle was overcome when India's new prime minister, whose campaign promised a tough stance with Islamabad, invited his Pakistani counterpart to be present at his swearing-in. If Indian and Pakistani politicians can make meet but the countries' cricketers can't on the field, then there is something very wrong with the world.

What truly puzzles me is that beyond the excuses, the decision makes little sporting, and consequently financial, sense.

Last week, thanks to two Indians who are supposedly Test cricket fans, I learned of Branch Rickey. The American owner of a baseball team, Rickey became famous for (amongst several other reasons) breaking Major League Baseball's colour barrier by signing the African American player Jackie Robinson. While his act carried enormous political and cultural weight, at the heart of its motivations was the simple fact that Robinson was a terrific player. In his first season, Robinson won the Rookie of the Year award as his team went all the way to the World Series finals. As a contemporary later recalled, Rickey's decision "was born out of a combination of idealism and astute business sense".

Given the IPL's teams are run by some of India's most celebrated corporate's, and have the finances to hoover up talent from around the world, one wonders how long they can continue to persist with a business decision as terrible as the one to exclude Pakistani players. If they do sign some up, the significant cultural and economic common ground between the two countries means that endorsements, sponsorships and other commercial link-ups would exploit both the Pakistani and Indian markets.

The move would also likely generate the same sort of PR boost that politicians and actors, among others, have recently received due to cross-border cooperation. But most significantly, signing Pakistani players would mean more wins, more fans, more money. When it comes to the bottom line, Pakistani players are a significant asset to have on the side.

To be fair, it can be argued that the mood has been slow to change, and the notoriously fickle India-Pakistan relations continue to be unreliable. In that light, it is understandable that team owners might feel apprehensive. But I genuinely feel that the time for us to move on has arrived.

So, for what might be the only time in my life, let me sum up by paraphrasing a famous Ronald Regan quote: "Mr Srinivasan - tear down this wall!"