Will Team India tour Pakistan in the next Asia Cup? President of the Asian Cricket Council, Jay Shah, showed his stand while allotting the Asia Cup to Pakistan, it is almost clear that Team India is going to tour the Asia Cup in 2023.
Actually, the coming of Pakistan team to India or coming of Team India to Pakistan is neither in the hands of Pakistan Cricket Board nor in the hands of BCCI. In both these cases, the governments of both the countries take the decision, but the recent political and international developments have progressed so fast that in the next few days, the things that the Government of India are now seen batting on the front foot. There are four such big developments that show the possibilities of Team India touring Pakistan.
Once the meeting of foreign ministers of SAARC countries was opposed by the Government of India by saying this, the government did not want the Taliban representative to be invited to that meeting, but now the Taliban’s deputy prime minister will also attend the meeting on the future of Afghanistan. This meeting will be held on October 20 in Moscow.
Pakistani representatives will also be there as well as Indian contingent will also be seen participating in it. Not only this, India has invited Pakistan’s delegation to the National Security Advisors meeting in New Delhi in November. Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Moeed Yusuf has been called in this. The invitation has been confirmed by Pakistan but it has sought time to take a final call on its participation in the meeting.
Third, the Indian contingent has agreed to visit Pabbi (Pakhtunkhwa) in Pakistan. This meeting is the Regional Anti-Terror Mechanism Meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization. And fourth, Parliamentary leaders have been invited to the centenary celebrations of Commonwealth Nations, in which the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairperson of the Senate of Pakistan have also been invited. According to reports, the governments of both the countries have not expressed any objection to participating in it.
Although the whole matter is political, but it shows that now the Indian delegation is not averse to going to Pakistan, nor is there any objection to inviting the Pakistani delegation to India. In a way, both the countries seem to be moving towards cricket diplomacy.
Cricket diplomacy started in 1987 in both the countries. The Reliance Cup was organized in the same year. The Pakistan team visited India through the Cricket for Peace initiative. Zia-ul-Haq and Rajiv Gandhi restored the cricket series, but at the VIP stands, Zia-ul-Haq created a sensation in Rajiv Gandhi’s ear by saying that we had made an atomic bomb and 11 years after this incident, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif first met in New York and then the Lahore bus service was started.
On their initiative, a series was organized in both the countries and from this the Kargil war was imposed the very next year.
In 2004, Vajpayee went to Pakistan to be a part of the SAARC Summit. Once again, the series was organized in both the countries. In this way three series were organized in three years. Team India has never been to Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai bombings. In 2011 World Cup semi-final peace talks were held between Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Raza Gilani as well as agreed on a cricket series.
Due to which after two years, the Pakistan team came to play three ODIs and one T20 match series. At the same time, the last Bi-lateral series between the two countries proved to be. Since the Modi government took over, no bilateral series could be organized in both the countries but now the hopes of cricket diplomacy have been raised again and Jay Shah has also indicated this by handing over the hosting of Asia Cup to Pakistan.
