The exclusion of Pakistani cricketers in the third series of the Indian Premier League the world’s biggest privately organised Twenty/20 cricket tournament has expectedly raised a furore in sporting and political circles in the subcontinent and beyond.
The fact that there were no bids for some of the world’s best players – after all, Pakistan are world champs in this version of the game – cannot be seen exclusively through the prism of the long troubled relationship between India and Pakistan, though that is indeed a major factor.
Like all big international sport that involves millions of fans and therefore billions of dollars, IPL is primarily a business proposition that is obviously driven by the profit motive above everything else. And in today’s wired world of instant media, reputations affect associations that in turn affect the profits of companies whose reputations are affected by virtue of their associations.
Ask Tiger Woods. No sooner had the caboodle of skeletons begun to tumble out of his carefully stowed cupboards and started to pile up in full public view magnified many times over by the gossipy instant media than his sponsors – some of the world’s biggest and most visible brands – began to desert him in droves.
They were all worried about their own reputations – and by extension profits – being damaged by continuing to associate with a celebrity after all his dirty linen was out in the public even if he were the richest sportsman of all time. It simply did not matter.
Given Pakistan’s present situation in regional and global politics and especially the now proven involvement of its citizens in the Mumbai carnage of November 2008 that cost over 170 innocent lives and the fact that IPL is all said and done an Indian baby, it would be hard to imagine any Indian company dying to associate itself with such a perceived reputation even if it were the world’s best team.
It would clearly be suicidal for any business or sporting entrepreneur to risk being lumped with anything perceived to have even the slightest whiff of an association with subversive activity that cost so many lives and touch a raw nerve in the Indian psyche – even if it is simply the nationality of the players. This would be the overarching factor in their decision-making even given that the players obtaining visas to play in India was seen as iffy for a while, although everyone would wholeheartedly agree that the players could hardly be faulted for this state of affairs.
Life, business and, of course, profits are all about perception. And the fact that the Pakistani players have been left out in the cold is little else but the outcome of a shrewd business decision and must be seen as such.
Senior ministers of the Indian government have strenuously denied that it brought no pressure to bear on IPL to leave out the Pakistanis, which is entirely possible. It is unlikely that the government would do anything to jeopardise such a huge revenue generating activity such as the IPL unless it had extreme security concerns, which, in this instance weren’t there.
This episode involving some of the best players belonging to an entire nation as much as the preceding episode that involved but one man who rose meteorically to become golf’s biggest legend only go to illustrate just how much reputations matter – whether they are national or individual.
Later this year India will be hosting the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, in which, too, Pakistan’s athletes will participate. It is unlikely in that instance that any of what affected the IPL tournament will come into play. This is simply because those Games are almost completely of an institutional nature with virtually no sponsorships. The only thing that could spoil that party would have to be bad politics – not business.