Pakistan is crying hoarse about being "snubbed". N.Srinivasan from BCCI, who happens to be one of the franchise owners, gives bland and non-committal statements - as good as they come. While the roots of this stand-off can be traced back to the 26/11 attacks, the political machinations seems to have been spun after Jan11th, leading up to the auction day of Jan 19th. Jan 6th was the deadline for lining up the players who were to go under the hammer ( the Pak players alone have been singled out for literal hammering, at least their egos have been ), and at that point of time it would have taken at least one franchise to express interest for a player to be drafted for the auction. So at the end of that deadline, 11 Pak players, including the combustible Afridi and the T20 miser Gul, are identified as worthy enough of bargaining for. Come the D-day, IPL team owners develop cold feet. Conspiracy theories (some might be for real) that abound:
1. The collective boycott by all franchise owners does not come as a surprise, and would not be presumptuous to rule out the direct involvement of P.Chidambaram and S.M.Krishna. The former is known to be quite close to N.Srinivasan and hence would have not had to exercise any arm-twisting.
2. Indian govt wants to derive the maximum effect of alienating Pak with little effort. No war cries, no build up around the LoC. Just pure last minute volte-face.
3. The dying interest in Ind Vs Pak cricket clashes can be revived with this kind of needling. In effect, BCCI wants to reap more dividends from the next big clash between the two countries, i.e. whenever the cricketing ties resume. But for that the national teams would have had to be in good form coming into that clash. From its current form, Pakistan will have to raise its game by more than just few notches.
4. One way of expressing resentment to the US sale of its drones to Pak that are apparently intended to expedite the latter's offensive in Waziristan against Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This comes in the background of US fears that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal could fall into wrong hands. Wonder how they are so sure that US drones won’t be usurped by the militant groups.
5. To tell Pak to bring to justice the perpetrators of Mumbai attack, instead of crying out loud about lack of credible evidence from India.
6. Warn Pak that it better ensure that a repeat of 26/11 doesn’t occur, given LeT's alleged plan of dropping suicide bombers by air.
7. Bring to knees certain ego laden Pak players, especially Afridi, who sure didn’t make many friends during his association with Deccan Chargers last time around. (Not that our super heroes don’t have one. Ask Bhajji, SSanth, Praveen Kumar and Yuvi)
8. The most buyable one: Given the current tension between the two nations, there is no guarantee that the teams will get to see their Pak sign-ups in India.
9. With 11 games scheduled in Mumbai, Mr.Thackeray's threats for disrupting matches do look real. By then even MNS and the state government would have ran out of ideas to build on their facade for Marathi values and would join hands in playing spoil sport to IPL matches in Mumbai. IPL committee would probably find it too hard to re-schedule matches in different venues, which could affect their earnings adversely.
10. Force Pak to voluntarily break all ties with India, including withdrawal from World Cup Hockey and Commonwealth games.
11. Pakistan would probably want to assume a higher moral ground in this IPL stand-off and it has reacted angrily, as expected. Hence, they would probably be inclined to foist more incursions and foment trouble in Kashmir, but unfortunately their current dependency on US for financial and military aid would mean that they would not be in a comfortable position to back such anti-India activities pro-actively. However, this sort of logical assumption has been proven wrong in the past.
The after effects:
1. Ijaz Butt and Rehman Malik have already spoken their mind, sometimes without even making up theirs. Predictable and along similar lines, just like their political utterances. Mr. Butt butted in first that it didn’t matter to anyone that Pak players have been ignored in IPL, only to take up the issue with ICC shortly. Waiting to hear from Mr.Querishi as well.
2. Afridi standing up for his brothers. Some of the questions he has raised obviously seem pertinent, with regard to players like Martyn being valued higher than T20 exponents from Pak. All that they are seeking are honest and straight-forward opinions, and not to be kept in the dark about being accepted into the IPL fold.
3. The Pak government is calling for boycott of screening Indian movies and channels inside their borders, which they hope would lead to a wrangling between the entertainment industry in India and the Indian government.
4. The camera friendly showman, Lalit Modi, getting another chance to get some media bytes.
5. Maybe, a blog for this year's anonymous IPL player blog is already in the works...
While the above theories are in a lighter vein, on a serious note: Cricket fans would probably feel that the IPL would be poorer without the maverick Pak players. But there would be the other section who would think that this kind of non-engagement serves the Pak establishment just right. They would opine that Cricket and any kind of dialogue with Pak are best relegated to the background for now, at least until the lost lives of 26/11 have been accounted for and credible steps are taken to dismantle the terror network.
