Sipu Jha
Jammu and Kashmir have become India’s cricketing champs by thrashing favourites Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy finals. This is a fantastic, heart-warming Cinderella tale in a small state long viewed as a no-hoper in cricket. Experts say nobody watches Ranji Trophy cricket because it is not exciting and lacks top stars. But I followed the Ranji semi-final and the final avidly and, by the end, was cheering myself hoarse for J&K. There must have been many more viewers like me. Before this season, J&K had played 334 Ranji Trophy matches over 67 years and won only 45 of them. It took 44 years to win its first match, against the Services in 1982-83. But this year, it steadily eliminated one tough opponent after another—Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and finally seven-time champions Karnataka.Karnataka had five Test players—KL Rahul, Mayank Agrawal, Devdutt Padikkal, Karun Nair, and Prasidh Krishna. J&K had none. A year ago, you would have been hard-pressed to name a single member of its team. Yet it won in commanding style.This is more than a cricketing story. Out of the blue, it provides a non-political avenue to help alienated Kashmiris feel part of the Indian mainstream. They suddenly find themselves kings of Ranji cricket, admired and applauded across India in a manner no one could have imagined a year ago. May Kashmiri youngsters once seduced by terrorism trade Kalashnikovs for cricket bats!Kashmir’s notorious cricket audiences have been known to cheer for Pakistan against India. This has drawn accusations of anti-nationalism and taunts asking them to leave India and go to Pakistan.Kashmiris say this is a grave misunderstanding of their sentiments. My former Economic Times colleague Najeeb Mubarki says that cricketing crowds in the state have no particular love for Pakistan, but they want to express their alienation from India and outrage at violations of human rights in the state. And so, said Najeeb, Kashmir’s cricketing crowds will cheer for any opponent of India — be it Pakistan, or anyone else.In the current World Cup T-20 super-eights, South Africa thrashed India last week. News reports from Srinagar spoke of Kashmiris cheering for South Africa while watching the match on TV. With draconian laws now in place against anything that can be interpreted as anti-national, youngsters are cautious today about celebrations in public. But laws cannot transform what they feel or whom they cheer for.Can the mere winning of a cricket trophy change hearts and minds? No, that is a stretch. But all conventional means of ending Kashmiri alienation — govt jobs, subsidies for industries, encouraging tourism — have not achieved much. Cricket has promise because Kashmir, like the rest of India, is cricket crazy. Team sports are an excellent way to bind together people from different communities. Football is the biggest spectator sport globally, and Manchester United has millions of fans even in China and Africa. Cricket is not too far behind.Once you play for a cricket team, all your teammates become vital partners, regardless of religion or region. This is true, at least in part, for cricketing audiences too, which in India means almost everyone. Once, cheering against India was a Kashmiri way of expressing alienation. But now that J&K is Ranji champion, cricket has the potential to tackle that alienation and bind Kashmiris and other Indians closer together. The state is now central to Indian cricket, not an outlier. Its Ranji victory was a team effort of six Hindus and five Muslims. It scored a mammoth 584 runs in its first innings, with Shubham Pundir (ever heard of him?) scoring a century and five others scoring half-centuries. But the J&K star was unquestionably fast bowler Auqib Nabi, nicknamed the ‘Baramulla Express’. At the age of 29, he is a late developer. But his bowling in the last two Ranji seasons has been so phenomenal that it seems a crime that he is not in the Indian Test team.Nabi took 44 wickets last season and 60 this season, the most by any bowler. Despite having catches dropped he snagged 5 for 54 in Karnataka’s first innings, including the cream of its batting stars. He had earlier spearheaded J&K’s victory in the quarter final against MP (12 wickets for 110 runs) and semi-final against Bengal (9 wickets for 123 runs). His bowling average this season has been an astonishing 12.7 runs per wicket —anything below 20 is outstanding. Very few bowlers can boast of a hat-trick—three wickets in three successive balls. But in the Duleep Trophy six months ago, Nabi (playing for North Zone) got four wickets in four successive balls, a feat so extraordinary that cricket has yet to invent a word for it. Hurrah for Kashmir! Hurrah for India!
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