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Judging by the statements coming out of Cricket Australia, it would seem as if only a miracle can now save the Australian tour of Pakistan. Australia have been one nation who appear to be unequivocally against the idea of playing in Pakistan and their cricketers are not the only ones who have shown reticence in this regard.

Their hockey players did the same a few months ago, all of which begs the question that if others can come and play, why can’t the Australians. In fact, it may even be argued that the small Pakistani crowds at least at Test matches generally mean that most foreign players have much less to fear than they do in Australian grounds where the combination of beer and almost fanatical support for the home team with the racism that is never far from the surface has made life difficult for many touring cricketers.

The South Africans had their problems in Australia, the ace Sri Lankan off-spinner had refused to tour Australia and more recently, India’s Harbhajan Singh has faced immense pressure although his acquittal of charges that perhaps should never have been brought in the first place is not something that has put the Australians to any disadvantage.

One can understand the anxiety of the Pakistan Cricket Board at the prospect of the cancellation of the Australian tour. One can also support some of the steps that they have taken to safeguard the Board’s financial interests; what, however, is rather more difficult to understand is the way they have chosen to handle the situation.

One fully appreciates the need to insure the tour, given that the Australians for months have had a rather ambiguous attitude, even before the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto. However, by making this very understandable step public, the Board has, certainly inadvertently, given out a message that it never really expected the Australians to come to Pakistan.

Therefore even though the financial imperative for insuring the tour cannot be denied, there was a need to handle the matter a little more carefully and ensure that it did not come out into the public domain, at least till such time as the tour was declared finally and irrevocably off. There was no need whatsoever to come out with it at a stage when negotiations are still on.

Similarly, the announced attempt to get an Indian team to tour Pakistan, while understandable, should have been handled differently. The announcement of such a move once again reveals a virtual acceptance of the fact that the Australian tour is off — and in any case it is difficult to see how the Indians can fill the breach given that their much publicised Indian Premier League kicks off in April.

I would also think that it is a bit naive, both politically and administratively, to be threatening, at this point in time, to cancel Pakistan’s next tour to Australia if the Aussies refuse to come. For one thing, people always react negatively to threats; having been the number one cricketing nation in the world for almost a decade now, there is a level of arrogance that, perhaps understandably, has crept into the manner in which the Australians both play and administer the game and it is, as such, extremely unlikely that they will react positively to this threat coming from a cricketing power whom they doubtless consider to be way down the pecking order.

Secondly, such a threat would in all probability bring the PCB into direct confrontation with the ICC’s rules on the subject. The ICC rules allow the cancellation of a tour due to security reasons but not as retaliation against a tour previously cancelled. The way to play this would be to let the Aussies know through unofficial channels that such action was a possibility and the way it would be done would be by sending a Pakistani security team to Australia shortly before the proposed tour — and the more shortly the better as it would leave the Aussies with less time to arrange a replacement tour — and then regret that the security report had left the PCB with no option but to cancel the tour.

The details of the report do not have to be revealed to anyone, as indeed the Aussies have not even named the sources on whose report they are showing such reluctance to tour Pakistan.

It is in issues like this that administrative wisdom, maturity and acumen can be displayed — and that should really be what the Board is there for. The perks of the job, the foreign tours and the photos at the podium, are very good, but the job should be about a little more than those frills, lovable as they must be.

Source:Cricket News