This couldn’t have come at a better time. It is true, diplomatic tensions between India and Pakistan are only escalating, but the Indian High Commission in Pakistan has set a trend by issuing visas to the Pakistan blind cricket team to enable it to travel to India for the Word T20 that begins on January 31, reports PTI. The team is now looking forward to getting a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the ministries of foreign affairs and interior of the Pakistan government.
“We plan to travel to India on January 28 as the championship begins from January 31 and we have already applied for clearance from the relevant government ministries to go to India,” a spokesperson of the Pakistan Blind Cricket Council (PBCC) said to the news agency. And the good news is that if things fall into place, the Indian blind team may also tour Pakistan for ODIs and T20 matches. The head of PBCC, Syed Sultan Shah, who would be accompanying the team to India, would speak to Indian officials to invite the team to Pakistan sometime at the end of this year.
“We are very happy that the visas have been issued as we were a bit anxious because of the refusal of visas to the Pakistan hockey teams and some other federations by the Indian High Commission in recent days,” Shah said.
Without being biased, there is no denying that the Indian High Commission has taken the right step by granting visas to the Pakistani side and this reinforces the fact that sports and politics should not be mixed. With the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) mulling legal options against the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for not adhering to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to play bilateral series against Pakistan, the issuance of visas though not for a bilateral tour, should still bridge the gap and hopefully, usher in a new dawn in bilateral cricketing relations between the estranged neighbours.
And if the Indian blind cricket team does travel to Pakistan despite security concerns, it might open the door for other teams to tour Pakistan and give the fans in the country to be live witnesses to international matches after years. Remember, the International Cricket Council (ICC) had banned international teams from touring Pakistan after the attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore in 2009. Since, then Zimbabwe is the only team to travel to Pakistan in 2015, but the rest have stayed away.
Let India and Pakistan set the ball rolling albeit with utmost assurance from Pakistan that security measures will be stringent to protect teams, especially India which faces acrimony from separatists sheltered in Pakistan.