“Cricket for peace is my mission, and I have come with that spirit.”*
(President General Muhammad Ziaul Haq, while talking to media after watching Pak-India match at Jaipur, India on February 21, 1987.)
Role of Sports in Harbouring Peace
Sports and recreation play a vital role in advancing human life. While sports are instrumental in individual and social life of human beings, at times they are also employed to harbor peace, foster goodwill, and enhance relations. Even in the ancient Greece, the hostile city-states used to revert to truce in their wars in order to compete in games. Given the nature of sports being a universal tool for cultural outreach and people-to-people exchanges, states have added them to their diplomatic toolkit with a view to both projecting their soft power and advancing their national interest through other means. In the initial phase of their contacts, China and the United States employed the famous ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ to break the ice and shape a favourable environment for practitioners to carve out avenues for further engagement and eventual rapprochement.
