Retired crickets should be allowed to hold important diplomatic posts

Rajiv Gandhi's doosra — announcing at a press conference that India would soon have a new foreign secretary — caught the then-incumbent, A P Venkateswaran, totally off guard and he walked, calmly. That, so far, held the record for diplomatic curveballs. This week, however, Kumar Sangakkara being stumped by the on-field offer of high commissionership to the Court of St James by Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena trumps the Gandhi googly, albeit in a more positive manner. What better way to reward a cricketer who has done his nation proud than ask him to represent his nation in the homeland of cricket? It could also be seen as a diplomatic master stroke — if Sanga accepts — as it would put the Sri Lankan Tamils in the UK in the unenviable and unpopular position of trying to queer the pitch (as they have done before, literally, at Lord's in 1982) for someone hailed as a 'gentleman beyond the game'. And the Lankan legend has certainly shown a knack for diplomacy already by delicately skirting a direct reply to the president's sudden offer.

The doyen of cricket in Pakistan, A H Kardar, has set the precedent at least in the subcontinent by becoming his nation's ambassador to Switzerland. And it may not be a bad idea to dispatch some former cricketing heroes to appropriate nations to bat for India again.