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Azharuddin, Tendulkar, Wasim Akram, Moin Khan Foil American's Dream Of a Joint Indo-Pak Team

J A Shenoy in San Francisco

Even as the Kargil war was raging, the sponsors of the International All Star Cricket Cup were convinced that they had succeeded in roping in top Pakistani and Indian players to be in one team, along with Sri Lankan players, to challenge in three matches in North America a team of top Australian, S African, New Zealand, English and West Indies players.

Too good to be true?

Well, in full page advertisements in their own newspaper, India Post, the Post Media Corp, announced the Asia XI would include, from India, Mohammad Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Ajay Jadeja, Javagal Srinath, Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, Robin Singh, and from Pakistan, Wasim Akram, Azhar Mehmood, Shoaib Akhtar, Saeed Anwar, Shahid Afridi, Moin Khan and Inzamam Ul-Haq.

The World XI team boasted of Brian Lara and Courtney Ambbrose from the West Indies, Steve Waugh and Mark Waugh from Australia, Hansie Cronje from South Africa and Chris Cairns from New Zealand.

Three dates were announced: August 3 in San Francisco, 7 in New York and 8 in Toronto.

"I think the series will promote cricket like crazy in America," Syed Abid Ali, former all-rounder from India, had said last month. Ali, who lives in California, was involved in the planning of the matches. And Dr Romesh Japra, the key promoter of the events, said that inspired by the August matches, cricket lovers in America should explore the possibility of having exclusive cricket grounds in a few American cities.

But there were many others who thought the highly publicized events would end in disappointment.

"This is indeed surrealistic," cricket buff Deepan Bajwa was wondering four weeks ago. "These guys are really going to play together?"

After chuckling for a few minutes, he said: "If the promoters of this match run either India or Pakistan there would be no wars, no Kargils."

But Bajwa thought the organizers had luck on their side when the war ended recently.

However, he, along with hundreds of skeptical as well as hopeful fans, found that the original announcement was too good to be true.

No, the matches were not cancelled.

But there was a radical change in the composition of Asia XI.

There was no Azharuddin, no Tendulkar, no Jadeja, no Srinath, no Kumble, no Rahul Dravid, no Robin Singh. Instead, there were Navjot Sidhu, Vinod Kambli, Maninder Singh, Vijay Yadav, Atul Wassan and Praveen Amre from India.

The Pakistanis were also no-show.

Instead, the truncated team had Sri Lankans playing along with Indians. Steve Waugh and Mark Waugh from Australia, Cronje from South Africa and Chris Cairns.

What went wrong?

Dr Japra blamed politics.

"The problem is not at the level of individual players," he said. "They are all more than willing to come. But we are facing some obstacles from national and international cricket authorities." He did not elaborate. But he added the Indian players were "anguished" and even "upset" that they were not allowed to join Asia XI. He said last week that while his organization "is still trying to get them on board", it would not like "to set them on a collision course with the authorities."

"We recognize that the careers of many players are dependent on cricket authorities," he said. "We would not like to compromise their career prospects for this series."

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