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| Indo-Pak cricketing ties may be off | | | ET DESK
Jammu, Dec 12: The sports minister MS Gill has bluntly said that the Indian cricket team's tour of Pakistan should not go ahead in the wake of the terror attacks in Mumbai. He said it is not the right time to play cricket with Pakistan when "people from their soil are indulging in mass murder in India".
"Is it possible for one team to arrive in Mumbai and indulge in mass murder, and have another team go and play cricket in the winter afternoon sun at Lahore, immediately after?," Gill asked rhetorically, and said he was not in favour of the Indian team playing in Pakistan.
He added, though, that it is up to the government to take a final decision.
The sports minister's categorical comment came on a day when Pakistan Cricket Board's chairman Ejaz Butt is scheduled to meet ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat and BCCI officials at Chennai in a bid to salvage the series.
The Indian team is scheduled to play five one-dayers, three Tests and a Twenty20 match during their January 6 to February 19 tour, subject to government clearance.
The sports minister said sporting contact is meant to enhance friendship and the cricket series was not a commercial drama to go ahead under the surveillance of thousands of security personnel.
"I have played cricket. I know the spirit of cricket. Cricket is not commerce," he said. "Sporting contact is for enhancing friendship between human beings, above all neighbours," Gill said. He also felt commercial reasons could not be a factor in deciding the fate of the series.
Recently tours of India's junior hockey team, Champions Trophy cricket and Australia's cricket tour of Pakistan were among the prominent sporting events which were cancelled this year.
Gill said Pakistan should first promise that it would help the world to stop terrorism. "It requires those in authority in Pakistan to give a clear indication, satisfactory to the world, of doing everything possible to prevent such murderous incursion, and to root out the basis of it all," he said.
Meanwhile, Congress joined the chorus for calling off the tour and said that Islamabad should not be 'let off the hook' on its 'tokenism' as only sustained pressure could lead to the dismantling of the terror infrastructure there.
"We do not want to let Pakistan off the hook in any manner....The government is right... That the cricket team should not go," said party spokesman Manish Tewari.
Leaders from BJP, JD (U), Samajwadi Party backed Gill's opinion that it was not the right time to play cricket with Pakistan when "people from their soil were indulging in mass murder in India". BJP leader and former Union Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain agreed India did not require to continue sporting relation with Pakistan.
"We should not send our cricket team to Pakistan as there is no need to maintain sporting ties with Pakistan in the wake of Mumbai terror attack," he told reporters. "I feel keeping the sporting ties at this juncture does not serve any purpose," he added. SP General Secretary Amar Singh also was of the same view. "The cricket team should not be sent to Pakistan -- the country which has sponsored so much terrorism and violence against us."
"Atal Behari Vajpayee started the bus service, but we got Kargil war," he added.
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