Also, the Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has already announced publicly that the water flowing down to arid Pakistan will be diverted by India to refill the drying Yamuna and different parts of Punjab.
Pressure was also mounted through social media on the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to stop playing cricket with Pakistan which is engaged in perpetrating terrorism and harbouring terrorists who are targeting India, particularly Jammu and Kashmir.
India and Pakistan are scheduled to face off in the World Cup in Manchester on Sunday June 16 later this year. While bilateral cricket tournaments between the two nations have become extinct, people in general are awaiting the decision from the government and see whether these two arch rivals will still clash at world cup matches.
Senior BCCI officials along with the members of the Committee of Administrators (COA) met in New Delhi last week to decide on the issue of boycotting the World Cup match against Pakistan. “16th June is very far away. We will take a call on that much later and in consultations with the government,” COA chairman Vinod Rai has said. BBCI will be writing to the International Cricket Council (ICC) expressing their concerns about attacks that took place and that security of players, officials and everybody else must be taken care of. The BCCI official and CEO Rahul Johri is also expected to raise this issue with ICC tomorrow (February 26) and will be requesting to ban Pakistan from playing in the World Cup. However, banning of Pakistan from the World Cup seems highly unlikely.
While emotions are running high and touching zenith for not to play against Pakistan and teach them a once and for all lesson, BCCI would be staring at a huge financial loss and even a hefty fine from the ICC if they indeed decide to forfeit the June 16 group match against Pakistan. It had already been reported earlier that the BCCI was mulling a forfeit by not playing Pakistan following the Pulwama terror attack and lose two points in the group match.
For Pakistan too it will not be easy as financially it has been catastrophic for the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).The BCCI had promised the PCB to play as many as five bilateral series during 2016-2022 but unfortunately due to continued terror attacks on India on Uri army base completely demolished cricketing relations between two countries.
Even the entry of former Pakistan’s World Cup winning captain Imran Khan as Prime Minister has not been able to help the PCB. One can understand the losses suffered by the PCB but the repeated failures by the Pakistanis to stop its non state actors from exercising terror activities on the Indian people has completely demolished the financial model of the Pakistan cricket.
The recent attacks during Pakistan Super League (PSL) has further assured the international committee that Pakistan is not yet safe to play international cricket. The PCB tried its level best to host the PSL final at Lahore but many international stars withdrew themselves from the tournament.
The BCCI, even though being the richest sporting body in the world, never took any unilateral decision either to play or not to play against Pakistan and has tactfully put the ball in the Union government’s court to decide on India’s World Cup match against Pakistan. If BCCI does play under the tricolour, it should have been matured and brave enough to take decisions on its own. Even the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has very candidly and categorically stated that there should not be any sporting activity between India and Pakistan as the latter is engaged in terrorist activities.
