Moves afoot to revive Pak tour

With big money talking loud and clear, the BCCI has been pulling out all stops in a bid to get the government to reconsider its decision to call off the proposed tour to Pakistan.

The government had in fact given an emphatic thumbs down, subsequent to which board officials indicated that the matter was closed, and that they had written to the Pak board informing them that the tour would not go on.

It turns out, however, that the Board has not, till date, written officially to their Pakistan counterparts to inform them that the tour was off. What the Pakistan board has got, instead, has been an intimation from the BCCI that the government had not given permission, but that efforts were on to induce a rethink.

With Raj Singh Dungarpur playing a leading role in networking with politicos of all hues, the last week has seen intense political activity aimed at getting the go-ahead from External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Sports Minister Uma Bharti.

Behind this urgent desire to go ahead with a tour to Pakistan -- even if it is a truncated one -- lurks the enormous sponsor interest in such a series. An Indo-Pak series is the hottest ticket going for television networks and corporate sponsors, who have been approaching the board with offers of big money if the tour does in fact go through.

Sahara India, which has been sponsoring the annual India-Pak exercise in Toronto, has approached the Pakistan board with an offer of $10 million for telecast rights. Sources meanwhile indicate that other corporate sponsors have approached the BCCI with prime offers.

With such incentives to spur their efforts, the Indian officials, led by Dungarpur, have been pushing hard, with backing from various politicians. The BCCI lobby has been arguing that with a ceasefire officially on in Kashmir, and with the Indian government sponsoring peace initiatives, a tour of Pakistan will in fact be a continuation of that process.

Dungarpur is in fact understood to have contacted the Pakistan board and informed PCB director Brigadier Munawar Rana that the PCB should go with the assumption that India will in fact tour Pakistan, and to keep all in readiness.

The PCB, thus, is readying for a short tour, including three Tests and three one-dayers. A tentative itinerary has been drawn up, and will be forwarded to the BCCI today for approval.

Tentatively, the tour calendar has been drawn up in such a way as to fit three Tests and the same number of ODIs between January 9, when the Indian team is expected to land in Pakistan (assuming that permission is given, of course) and February 10.

Earlier, the BCCI had tentatively planned to schedule a rather lengthy coaching camp just ahead of Australia's visit to India in February, in order to give coach John Wright an opportunity to work with the team and fine-tune various strategies ahead of the clash against the unofficial world champions. That plan, however, will go into the trashcan should the tour of Pakistan receive the go-ahead.

A decision, one way or other, is expected to be taken today.

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