Author: Fatima Raja
Publication: Friday Times
Date: November 14-20, 2003
Pace pioneer's heirs lament lack
of recognition in Pakistan
As the stump cartwheeled out of
the earth and into history, South Asian cricket was born. It was the end
of June, and a sunny day in London. Eleven men from India had travelled
over the seas to walk out before an audience of 24,000. Kitted out in their
whites, they were in Lord's to play their country's maiden Test match,
against colonial rulers.
India lost that 1932 Test, and it
would be 40 years before it would defeat England in England (Pakistan managed
it at The Oval in 1954). But in that match the seeds of South Asia's obsession
with cricket were sown. Players who were later divided between India and
Pakistan captured their countries' imagination.
India never forgot Nissar - but
Pakistan, where he chose to live after partition, did. To this day, he
is celebrated in India as the man who bowled the first Indian Test ball,
took the first Indian Test wicket, was the first Indian to take five wickets
in an innings, all in the same match.
At a ceremony hosted by the Cricket
Club of India (CCI) in Mumbai, Nissar's son Waqar Nisar came to accept
an award in his father's name: a piece of turf from Lord's, the only award
of its kind in Pakistan, given to all who took five wickets or scored centuries
at Lord's for India.
When Waqar Nissar was invited to
India, he found that Pakistani sports journalists had never heard his name.
Indeed, Waqar only found out that the CCI had been searching for Nissar's
family during a casual web browse, where he learned that CCI president
Raj Singh Dungarpur had been refused a visa to Pakistan. He had wanted
to come to search for Nissar's relatives.
When Waqar went to collect the award,
he was overwhelmed by how the bowler was remembered. "Everyone knew about
him, people wanted to take my autograph for his work," he recalls.
Not a cricket buff himself, and
only eight when his father passed away, Waqar found himself buffeted by
the names he had heard through his life. "After I received the award, Azharuddin
came to congratulate me. All the great cricketers - Kapil, Bedi, Gavaskar
- greeted me in my father's memory."
Those who remembered the Bombay
Presidency matches became quite emotional when they met Waqar. "One old
gentleman, the president of the Islam Gymkhana, and his father had been
the president before him, came to see me in tears. He was determined that
I visit my father's home ground."
And yet, for all the rousing welcome
in Bombay, for all the media coverage in India, in Nissar's own country
he is nearly forgotten. None of the players who made their mark for undivided
India's team are remembered in the successor state of Pakistan, not even
the Muslims who opted to come to the new nation. Realising how his father
is still respected in India, Waqar is bitter that a man who considered
himself Pakistani is forgotten in Pakistan.
If Pakistan was created as a homeland
for Muslims, he argues, "Muslims (before Partition) should be honoured
and considered Pakistani cricketers. Instead India has taken full ownership
of their talents.''
And Nissar's family has come to
accept this. They have kept safe much of the memorabilia from Nissar's
career, including the signed stump that was ripped out of the ground at
Lord's.
Now they plan to donate it all to
the CCI, to preserve it in the museum at Mumbai's historic Brabourne Stadium.
It is "more deserving than any other place," Waqar feels. "In Pakistan
there is no recognition for people who are no longer alive. There are not
even any enclosures dedicated to him."
