If the government did warn against the presence of Pakistani players in India or refused to give any firm assurances about visas, it showed an uncharacteristic pugnacity. New Delhi can mock Pakistan's overreaction, but it will not be able to wish away a feeling of churlishness about the entire episode, which detracts from India's generally benign and accommodative image.

It is not only that the presence of Shahid Afridi, Sohail Tanvir and others would have added a great deal of colour to the tournament, it would have also shown that however distrustful New Delhi may be about the Pakistani establishment, it does not have anything against the country's players and citizens. The sight of Afridi and Tanvir making their highly energetic contributions to the games would have also been a blow to the murderous jehadis and their backstage minders inside and outside the Pakistani army and the ISI.

If the government can be accused of being overcautious as well as cussed, the IPL bosses demonstrated a surprising lack of entrepreneurial enterprise and chutzpah. By preferring to take the aging Damien Martyn instead of Afridi, as Javed Miandad has pointed out, they have shown that they want to play safe rather than win, which is quite against the adventurism of the T20 format. If they lose money by keeping out star players, they will have only themselves to blame.

The government's quiet obstructionism and the timidity of the franchisees have been matched by Pakistan's hysterical reaction, which reveals the kind of paranoia from which it is suffering. The red cards shown to Pakistani players have been some kind of a last straw for it. The rejection was a confirmation that Pakistan was gradually being ostracized from polite society. It is becoming a pariah which cannot enter the well-lit rooms of the affluent.

Pakistan's decline and fall were accelerated after the targeting of the Sri Lankan cricketers by the jehadis in Pakistan last year, which robbed the country of all hope of staging international fixtures. It can play other countries only if they host the games or in neutral venues. This denial was a serious enough blow to its prestige, especially when it can boast of being T20 champions. But, now, even its players are being kept out of a major competition for no fault of theirs but because their country is seen to be falling off the map for harbouring terrorism.

The exclusion probably hurts all the more because Bangladesh, the other Islamic country which plays cricket, has been playing host to both India and Sri Lanka and will also hold the World Cup matches next year. The matches were initially awarded to South Asia as a whole, but the threat of terrorism in Pakistan has led to a rescheduling of the fixtures to only India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. When the eagerly awaited games start, the telecasting of each match in Pakistan will be like the thrust of a dagger, reminding Pakistan of its humiliating isolation.

Pakistan may have spared itself the agony this time by refusing to show the IPL matches on television. But it is like closing one's eyes to a spectacle which will enthrall thousands of cricket enthusiasts all over the world. As New Delhi has said, no doubt with considerable satisfaction, Pakistan must mull over the reasons which have brought it to this sorry pass. If sections of its establishment did not play footsy with the jehadis in order to unleash them against India, Pakistan might have escaped its mortifying seclusion.

But now its internal affairs - the absence of democracy, the suspicions about the safe havens for terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, the apparent unwillingness of the army to fight the jehadis - have started taking their toll on the sporting events with the hapless cricketers paying perhaps the heaviest price because of the money which is involved in the game. The scene is all the more bleak for Pakistan because there is little chance of a semblance of normality returning to the sporting scene. No player will go to Pakistan in the foreseeable future and, while Pakistanis may go on tour as part of a team, individual may be debarred for flimsy reasons, as by the IPL managers.

The situation is not unlike what happened to South African sportspersons when their country was under the white supremacist apartheid regime. Then, too, the domestic affairs of the country hurt its sporting links, and hugely talented cricketers like Graeme Pollock and Barry Richards were unable to display their geniuses to crowds all over the world. Pakistanis are better off because they can still play outside their country. But incidents like the IPL rejection can put them under a psychological strain. (IPA Service)