The Asian Block

GH feels nostalgic, but not for long

Although it adorns the stadium in Mohali (above), the name of IS Bindra may not inspire instant recognition in many readers of Et Al. Still, his death a week ago came at a piquant moment. In his time on the Board of Control for Cricket in India, Bindra was one of the world’s most formidable and consequential administrators - shrewd, tough and forward-looking. He broke the stranglehold that India’s national broadcaster Doordarshan had over the game there; Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi would have got nowhere without his patronage. Not least of all, Bindra ensured that India and Pakistan maintained cricket contact through phases of diplomatic discord and even open war.

It was enough make you feel nostalgic for ‘the Asian bloc’. Remember the days when a faintly orientalist Anglo-Australian cricket media used to bemoan the cumulative power of India and Pakistan, sometimes in cahoots with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh? Remember how the alliance of India’s NKP Salve and Pakistan’s Air Marshal Nur Khan brought the World Cup to the subcontinent for the first time in 1987 under the auspices of PILCOM? Remember the modernising collaborations between India’s Jagmohan Dalmiya and Pakistan’s Ehsan Mani at the International Cricket Council?

Because the ‘Asian bloc’ has become the Asian block: the parties getting on least well are those who are nearest neighbours, reflecting their overlapping and competing ambitions in the collapsing postwar liberal order, arguably further inflamed by the thrall of social media in south Asia.