FRACAS DEEPENS
The Super Four encounter between the sides featured a lot of verbal exchanges. © Getty
The India-Pakistan cricket rivalry may have just escalated further. Recent acrimonious exchanges between players have now drawn administrators into the controversy, intensifying tensions between the two sides.
Following a series of complaints and counter-complaints lodged by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) against each other’s players, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has scheduled hearings for Thursday, September 25. Meanwhile, PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi has added fuel to the fire.
Naqvi posted a video of Cristiano Ronaldo signaling something that looks similar to the act that Harris Rauf performed during the Super Four match on September 21. Rauf’s gesture was widely interpreted as a reference to the recent armed conflict between the two nations.
But it is understood that Ronaldo was not exactly gesturing about a crashing plane but about the dip of his goalkick.
While Naqvi’s exact intent remains open to interpretation, the PCB chief appears to be using the global football legend’s clip to endorse and justify Rauf’s controversial act, suggesting that the Pakistan pacer’s boundary line actions were nothing out of the ordinary.
The larger question, however, is whether the chief of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) should make a case of public defence of a player who is under investigation for a violation of the ICC code-of-conduct in a tournament he is supposedly presiding over. In a related, if not exact, instance, Jay Shah had refrained from waving the tricolour at a match. He was the chief of the ACC then.
How this dispute unfolds remains to be seen. On Thursday, the ICC will hold a hearing on the BCCI’s complaint against Rauf’s gesture, as well as Sahibzada Farhan’s bat-as-gun celebration after reaching a half-century in the same game.
A separate hearing has also been scheduled for the PCB’s complaint against India’s Suryakumar Yadav, whose post-match remarks following the September 14 league fixture expressed solidarity with the Pahalgam terror victims and the Indian Army. Match referee Andy Pycroft will preside over the BCCI’s case, while Richie Richardson will adjudicate the complaint against the India skipper.
At first glance, these gestures may seem minor, but in the highly charged context of India-Pakistan tensions and the backdrop of the conflict between the countries earlier this year, they are unmistakably political statements, a clear breach of the ICC player code. One will have to wait the customary 24 hours to know the outcome of the hearing.
The two teams could also be in line for a third face-off in this competition, this time in the final on September 28.
This story was edited at 5:30 PM IST on September 25
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