Protests and Sport

Major sporting occasions are high visibility showcases, and naturally invite attention from most interested agencies. International sport has always been fertile ground for political protest and dissent from Jesse Owens in 1936, to the Black Power salutes in the Mexico Olympics of 1968, to the current protests in cities around the world in support of Tibet in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

International Cricket has had its share of protests. India playing Cricket with Pakistan has always been a touchy political issue, both from the point of view of refraining from playing, and from the point of view of using a series as a political statement (the Friendship Series in 2004). Australia and the West Indies did not play in Sri Lanka in the 1996 World Cup, for security reasons. A combined team from India and Pakistan played an exhibition ODI against Arjuna Ranatunga's Sri Lankans in response to this. This was at the time when India and Pakistan were not playing bilateral series. The selection of Basil D'Oliviera in the MCC touring party for the Test tour of South Africa in the late 1960's caused the series to the cancelled after the South African government protested D'Oliviera's inclusion. This came to be known as the D'Oliviera Affair and led to South Africa being banned by the ICC until 1992.

The issues are many, and in the significantly less urgent, and less critical arena of popular sentiment, the question invariably seems to be - should politics and sport mix? Colin Cowdrey for example, writing about the D'Oliviera Affair in his autobiography, took the view that they were simply trying to play cricket, and that politics and sport ought not to have been mixed. Many have taken the view in the recent China-Tibet issue, that once the Olympics had been awarded to Beijing, it is incumbent upon the rest of the world to help China make it a success and not let it be disrupted. Richard Gere, Hollywood superstar turned activist, makes the counter argument succinctly. He suggests that the Olympics are China's opportunity to showcase their society and their country, and while the violent clampdown continues in Tibet they ought not to be allowed to produce their show unmolested.

Nasser Hussein wrote feelingly about the Zimbabwe controversy during the 2003 World Cup in his autobiography. In his view, at the time, there was a clear distinction between the British Government making a firm decision that the English team would not play in Zimbabwe, and the British Government merely suggesting that the English team not play in Zimbabwe, and leave the burden of the actual decision on the ECB. What actually happened was the latter with the result that Hussein's England were left in the lurch and lost valuable points through their Zimbabwe boycott.

Clearly, this is a complex issue, and as with most significant, charged issues, emotions run high. I remember being very upset that India's cricketers were being used for public relations purposes by the Indian Government in the hastily arranged 2004 tour to Pakistan - the so called Friendship series. But then again, why should they not be used for public relations purposes? This, as i think about it now, is not as clear cut as it once was. Public protest, as has been the case with the Tibet protests, adds another dimension to the whole thing.

How are the protesters disrupting the tour of the Olympic flame through the cities of the world by trying to extinguish the flame and or impede the bearer of the flame (Sachin Tendulkar is scheduled to be one in Delhi), different from the people who vandalized the Wankhede stadium pitch a few years ago to emphasize their disagreement about Pakistan and India playing cricket? Most of us will doubtless view the pro-Tibet protesters favorably (i do), while many (if not most) of us think that the people who dug up the pitch and poured oil into it to be vandals (i do). How do we reconcile these two things?

Many critical observers will jump at these comparisons, and indeed, this post does offer only an extremely short, extremely superficial and brief view of this complex issue. The Olympic Charter explains why Sport is important and there is little disagreement on this. Protest, in my view, and the principle of offering protest where injustice is observed or percieved, is equally important. If you think about it, Sport and Protest are two arenas which are remarkably similar, for both entail the expression and exposure of character - both are outward expressions (often direct and instinctive) of one's inner most, core being.

Something to think about...... for all of us. A great sportsman like Tendulkar should know better than to carry the Olympic torch when others like Kiran Bedi have refused to do so. We can blame the politics of it all, but the simple point is, that it is our Government, and it is our character which is revealed. We ought not to sacrifice it at the altar of "interest".