SA’s 109-run win to conclude a 2-0 series victory against Sri Lanka in Gqeberha on Monday has left them with the task of winning just one of the Boxing Day or New Year Tests against Pakistan to book a place in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) at Lord’s in June 2025.
It’s an exhilarating prospect with, hopefully, many positive ramifications for the future.
The WTC has provided the sizzle and spice not just to maintain interest in the format but to heighten it around the world, with the Border/Gavaskar Trophy in Australia garnering most followers (obviously) with England’s Bazball demolition of New Zealand and the SA-Sri Lanka series also collecting millions of eyeballs.
But cricket is never far from politics, and vice versa — just to remind us that the sport has rarely been just a sport at international level. There are just more than 70 days remaining before the scheduled start of the ICC Champions Trophy — and the global tournament has no schedule and no home. And there are no answers.
The revived eight-team, 50-over tournament was awarded to Pakistan three years ago amid millions of raised eyebrows. Would the Indian team play in it? Could they — would they be permitted to by the Indian government? The answer, as most followers expected, is “no”. The actual cricketers have no problem playing against each other. In fact, they relish it. But they don’t have a say.
The ICC has suggested India play their games at a neutral venue, most likely the United Arab Emirates, but that could necessitate a semifinal and even the final being staged at a couple of days’ notice with stadiums in Lahore and Dubai both being prepared at huge cost, never mind the travel, accommodation and ticketing logistics.
Initially, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) refused a “hybrid” model. Now the Pakistan government has countered with the threat that Pakistan teams will not participate in ICC events staged in India, of which there are four between 2025 and the 2031 50-over World Cup.
If the ICC moves the entire tournament out of Pakistan, the PCB would lose about $70m in staging fees and be fully justified in suing the governing body. And it is unimaginable to stage the tournament in Pakistan but without the participation of India.
But if the cricketers are being made to feel like pawns in somebody else’s chess game, it’s nothing compared to a T20 tournament recently staged in Georgetown, Guyana — the immodestly named Global Super League. It’s a tournament involving four randomly invited teams (and the Guyana Amazon Warriors), a huge oil reserve, Russia, India and an army bristling for a fight.
About a decade ago oil was discovered off the Guyanese coast. It has transformed the economy and the lives of its previously impoverished citizens with a vast rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.
But neighbours Venezuela have had their eyes on the province of Essequibo ever since a French imposed border “treaty” awarded it to Guyana in 1899. Now they really want it back, and its oil. Their army is massed on the border threatening an invasion.
Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela doesn’t have the financial or military clout for the operation, but Russia’s Vladimir Putin does, and they are staunch allies. So, Guyana, with half its population of Indian descent, needs a superpower of their own.
Last month, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the country and unveiled the Global Super League trophy. India’s rapidly expanding economy and population could also benefit from a steady supply of oil from a friendly ally. And they like cricket, too.
What could be better than a “high-profile” cricket tournament to shine a light and focus attention on a looming national incursion — and line up two of the most rambunctious and ambitious global leaders in opposite corners, albeit behind the largely inconsequential leaders of two South American nations.
It is anyone’s guess if or what the players from Hampshire, Lahore Qalanders, Victoria and the Rangpur Riders gave as the reasons they were playing in a bizarrely abstract tournament, which didn’t exist a couple of months ago and may not again. Or whether the only thing which mattered to them was a prize-money pot of a $1m.
It may, just, be possible to measure how small $1m is compared to the trillions at stake in the long run, but it’s emphatically impossible to quantify the degree to which a sport is being shamelessly used, with amusing ease, to further geopolitical agendas. The cricketers most certainly aren’t to blame.
Most of us would wear an orange wig and play the clown if the money was good enough.
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