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Forfeit is worse than surrender: Shashi Tharoor on why India should play Pak in World Cup

The comment by Tharoor, an MP from Thiruvananthapuram, came amid growing calls for a boycott of the scheduled match against Pakistan.

Forfeit is worse than surrender: Shashi Tharoor on why India should play Pak in World Cup

(Photo: IANS)

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday said that India should not forfeit its match against Pakistan in the upcoming World Cup tournament because that would be “worse than surrender”.

The comment by Tharoor, an MP from Thiruvananthapuram, came amid growing calls for a boycott of the scheduled match against Pakistan.

“At the height of the 1999 Kargil War, India played Pakistan in the cricket World Cup and won. To forfeit the match this year, as so many are clamouring for, would not just cost two points – it would be worse than surrender since it would be defeat without a fight,” Tharoor said.

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“We should not make cricket a substitute for other actions that our government should be able to take,” the 62-year-old Congress leader said.

Tharoor also slammed the ruling government and said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants to divert attention from “its own fecklessness and inept handling of the crisis”.

“Our government did not even declare national mourning wants to cancel a match 3 months from now? Is that a serious response to 40 lives taken in cold blood? BJP wants2divert attn from its own fecklessness&inept handling of the crisis.We need effective action, not gesture politics,” he tweeted.

 

The World Cup will held in England and Wales from 30 May to 14 July this year. India is scheduled to play Pakistan at Old Trafford, Manchester, on 16 June as part of the new round-robin format.

Demands for boycott have been growing in India ever since the 14 February Pulwama terror attack which claimed the lives of 44 CRPF personnel.

Conflicting reports suggest that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) might write to the International Cricket Council (ICC) to keep India out of the tournament.

Prominent cricketers who have backed the calls for suspension of cricket ties between India and Pakistan are Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh and Mohammed Shami.

Ganguly had on Wednesday said told a news channel that “a strong message needs to be sent” across to Pakistan.

“And, whatever reactions came from the people of India…was right. There is no chance of a bilateral series with Pakistan after this incident. I agree that after this attack, India should not only stop playing cricket, hockey or football with Pakistan but should cut all ties with them,” Ganguly was quoted as saying by PTI.

But Sunil Gavaskar said that though he will support if the government decides not to play the match against Pakistan, he opined that a boycott would be a loss for India and a gain for Pakistan.

He said that India has beaten Pakistan every time in a World Cup and is therefore in a position to ensure that Pakistan doesn’t advance in the competition at all.

Both Pakistan and India have previously won the World Cup, with India winning it two times. India has never lost to Pakistan in any World Cup match.

Following the 14 February terror attack, India has taken decisions both at the diplomatic and internal political level to isolate Pakistan. The decisions include revocation of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status granted to Pakistan in 1996 and hiked tariff on imports from Pakistan by 200 per cent.

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