More strange but true dispatches from around the sporting globe ...

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

By Dan Gigler, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

 

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This is what happens after a cricket match. God save us all if they go to war ...

Violent mobs clashed with sharp edged weapons in Ahmedabad, India, after riots and religious clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India's western state of Gujarat followed India's thrashing of neighboring Pakistan Saturday night in a World Cup Cricket match, United Press International reports.

The violence began minutes after hundreds of Indian supporters began dancing in the streets after the match in Centurion Park, South Africa.

CricInfo.com, an international Web site devoted to cricket news, reported that at least one person was killed in Ahmedabad and that Indian police have confirmed that 49 tear-gas shells were lobbed and three rounds fired in the communally sensitive areas of Shahpur, Rakhial and Gomtipur in Ahmedabad.

In the city of Baroda, three cars and a restaurant were torched by mobs after the win, and the police had to patrol the streets until the early hours of the morning. Elsewhere, groups of youths took to terraces of buildings and pelted revelers with stones, causing more violence.

In bizarre incidents in Karnataka, one person in a dairy was killed when a boiler exploded. Anxious to watch the match, the worker apparently cranked up the heating to dangerously high levels in order to speed up production.

Muslims in many parts of India supported Islamic Pakistan's team against their home team India. The clash, billed as the mother of sporting events between the two rivals, resulted in celebrations across India and a period of unofficial mourning across Pakistan.

India's cricket team managed a comfortable six-wicket victory against Pakistan in a match that had kept more than a billion people on edge for several weeks. Indian victory has assured it a place in the Super Sixes -- the next step in the tournament -- while Pakistan is struggling to find a place in the tournament that it won in 1992.

"It was a victory [against Pakistan] without guns," cricket fan Gurpreet Kaur said.

Cricket is next to religion in the public consciousness in both nations that have fought three wars since gaining independence in 1947.

Indian authorities have banned all sporting events directly between India and Pakistan, citing Islamabad's continuous support to Islamic rebels in Kashmir. This was the first sporting event between the teams since 2000. Nationalism is at its peak during matches between the two cricket-mad nations.

Deadly fires, stampedes and riots have been associated with previous Indo-Pakistani sporting events, and Islamabad canceled 1991 and '93 tours of team to India after threats from Hindu radicals. After a series of bombings in Bombay in '93, Hindu leader Bal Thackrey vowed to burn Indian fields on which Pakistan was scheduled to play.