India could have done without the additional pressure

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The cricket version of that philosophical question is: If the ICC held a tournament and India did not play, did it happen at all?

Maybe it was always like this, and we didn’t need the American President to demonstrate that international relations are built on money power. Or that bullying is the essence of negotiations. If you don’t have the cards prepare to be buried, as he said. Browbeating as diplomacy is the mantra, in cricket as in politics.

Cricket’s administrative hierarchy is no secret. The International Cricket Council (ICC) is governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which in turn is governed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The dots come pre-joined.

By the time you read this, India would have played a semifinal of the Champions Trophy, the result of which I am not privy to as I write. India might have good reasons for not playing in Pakistan. Security threats are ever present, and cricketers cannot be expected to carry the burden of diplomacy when politicians do not.

Cricket is full of military metaphors – teams do battle, play their big guns, chase targets, attack the bowling – but these should not cross over into reality.

If the Champions Trophy had to go ahead, and television hunger sated, there was only one way. No one, not the ICC (now of course headed by the BJP Home Minister’s son), not television, and certainly not Pakistan could afford to play the tournament without India.

Naturally, India dictated terms. They would play at a single venue, stay at the same hotel, and if a team had to make a fruitless trip from Pakistan to Dubai and back because no one was sure of the semifinal line-up till the last league match, well, so be it. Had Pakistan qualified, they might have had to play a semifinal of their own tournament in Dubai too. A simple tweak – with India playing the second semifinal rather than the first – would have meant Australia and South Africa didn’t both need to travel to Dubai.

It might be uncharitable to suggest that with such pandering anything other than a win in the final is a disaster for India. They are, after all the No. 1 team in the world, and the only one to have won all their matches in the league. But they could have done without the additional pressure.

When did we become the bullies of international cricket? Was it under Jagmohan Dalmiya, or later, when N Srinivasan was the BCCI Chief? Over three decades back, Dalmiya set in motion the moves that would lead to England and Australia, founding members, losing their veto in the ICC. The democratisation, and India’s marketing genius stimulated by their television audience, their fan base and increased disposable incomes have made India the nerve centre of the game. At the ICC, the focus shifted from politics to commerce while at the BCCI commerce led to politics.

One school of thought believes that former bullies England and Australia are merely being paid back in their own coin. In the early days of the ICC, cricket was seen as carrying a moral baggage, a version of the white man’s burden.

It didn’t matter to Srinivasan, or later office-bearers that the BCCI was becoming unpopular. They knew that they had built, to quote Emerson, a better mousetrap and that the world would beat a path to their door. The IPL merely underlined this.

If England and Australia (both of whom quickly and effortlessly climbed aboard the BCCI bandwagon) are paying the price for being bullies at one time, it is conceivable the fate might befall India as the cycle spins.

For the moment, India hold the cards, and if they have to be guaranteed a semifinal in Guyana (for the T20 World Cup two years ago) or Dubai now, it will be done. What is good for Indian cricket may not necessarily be good for world cricket and vice versa. But it’s India’s obsession that is running world cricket. All the compromises merely acknowledge that, however embarrassing it might be objectively speaking.