Can J&K’s Ranji triumph heal old wounds? | India News
Jammu and Kashmir beat favorites Karnataka to become India’s cricket champions Ranji Trophy The final is a fantastic, heart-warming Cinderella story in a small state long seen as undesirable in cricket. Experts say no one watches Ranji Trophy cricket because it is not exciting and lacks top stars. But I followed the Ranji semi-final and final with interest and found myself cheering for J&K at the end. There must be many more viewers like me. Before this season, J&K had played 334 Ranji Trophy matches over 67 years and had won just 45 of them. It took 44 years to win his first match against Services in 1982-83. But this year, it has consistently 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 Agarwal, Devdutta Padikal, Karun Nair and Famous Krishna. J&K had nothing. A year ago, you would have struggled to name a single member of its team. Yet it won in commanding style.It is more than a cricket story. Out of the blue, it provided an apolitical way to help isolated Kashmiris feel part of the Indian mainstream. They suddenly found themselves the kings of Ranji cricket, admired and admired across India in a way that no one could have imagined a year ago. Let the Kashmiri youth, once lured by terrorism, trade Kalashnikovs for cricket bats!Kashmir’s notorious cricket fans are known to cheer for Pakistan against India. It drew anti-national charges and asked them to leave India for Pakistan.Kashmiris say this is a serious misunderstanding of their sentiments. My former Economic Times colleague Najeeb Mubarki says that the cricketing crowd in the state has no particular love for Pakistan, but wants to express their estrangement from India and anger at human rights abuses in the state. And so, says Najeeb, the Kashmiri cricket crowd will cheer any Indian opponent – be it Pakistan or anyone else.South Africa defeated India last week in the ongoing World Twenty20 Super Eight. News reports from Srinagar said that Kashmiris were cheering for South Africa while watching the match on TV. With strict laws now in place against anything that could be interpreted as anti-national, young people today are wary of celebrating in public. But laws cannot change what they feel or who they are happy for.Can just winning a cricket trophy change hearts and minds? No, it’s a stretch. But all the conventional means of ending Kashmiri separatism – government jobs, subsidies for industry, encouraging tourism – did not achieve much. Cricket has promise because like the rest of India, Kashmir is cricket crazy. Team sports are a wonderful way to bond people from different communities together. Football is the biggest spectator sport worldwide, and Manchester United has millions of fans even in China and Africa. Cricket is not far behind.Once you play for a cricket team, all your teammates become important partners, irrespective of religion or region. This is true, at least partially, for cricket fans as well, which means almost everyone in India. Once, cheering against India was a way for Kashmiris to express their isolation. But now that Jammu and Kashmir are Ranji champions, cricket has the power to bridge that divide and bind Kashmiris and other Indians together. The state is now the epicenter of Indian cricket, not an outsider. Its Ranji victory was a team effort of six Hindus and five Muslims. It scored a massive 584 runs in its first innings Shubham Pundi (Ever heard of him?) scored a century and five others scored half-centuries. But the J&K star was undoubtedly fast bowler Aqib Nabi, nicknamed the ‘Baramulla Express’. At 29, he is a late developer. But his bowling has been so outstanding in the last two Ranji seasons that not being in the Indian Test team seems like a crime.Nabi took 44 wickets last season and 60 this season, the most by any bowler. Despite dropping catches, he took 5 for 54 in Karnataka’s first innings, including the cream of the batting stars. He had earlier led J&K to victory in the quarter-final against MP (12 for 110) and in the semi-final against Bengal (9 for 123). His bowling average this season is an astonishing 12.7 runs per wicket – anything under 20 is outstanding. Few bowlers can boast of a hat-trick—three wickets in three balls in a row. But Nabi’s (playing for Northern Territory) four wickets in four consecutive balls in the Duleep Trophy six months ago was so remarkable that cricket has yet to invent a word for it. Hooray for Kashmir! Hurray for India!
