The most anticipated early-round game of the World Cup could also come rigged with the most acute fan imbalance.

Less than a week before the India-Pakistan clash at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, uncertainty clouds the issuance of visas to fans from Pakistan.

Zaka Ashraf, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board management committee, was granted his visa last week but PCB sources indicated it was not certain he would put the document to use. He might want to see how the issuance of the other visas rolls out.

The PCB is waiting for word on visa clearance for its media contingent and Pakistani fans.

Pakistan’s World Cup campaign got under way on Friday with Babar Azam’s team defeating the Netherlands in Hyderabad, but they would surely have appreciated more support from the stands.

The only Pakistani fan from across the border at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium was possibly Mohammad Bashir, better known as “Chicago Chacha” in cricket circles. He holds an American passport, which may have shortened the visa procurement process for him compared with that for anyone of Pakistani origin.

While there is hope of visas for Pakistani journalists being cleared early this week ahead of the October 14 Ahmedabad fixture, there is no guarantee that the fans from across the border would be similarly lucky.

As many as 60 Pakistani journalists are learnt to have applied for visas. Currently, only two Pakistanis are on the commentary team — former internationals Ramiz Raja and Waqar Younis have been able to travel because they are on the International Cricket Council (ICC) commentators’ panel.

The PCB has taken up with the ICC the delay in visas for the Pakistani media and fans.

“PCB has been repeatedly reminding the ICC and the BCCI about their obligations to ensure the provision of visas for Pakistan fans and journalists. There is still no concrete response on the timeframe,” a PCB spokesperson told The Telegraph.

The then Prime Ministers of both countries — Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Raza Gilani — had witnessed the India-Pakistan World Cup semi-final in Mohali in 2011, the last time the tournament was held in India. India won the game and later, the final.

The BCCI maintains that it is for the ministries concerned — external affairs and home — to take a call on the visas while the ICC has been stressing the “obligation” factor. “This is an obligation of our hosts and they are working hard on it with our full support. Every effort is being made to get this sorted,” an ICC spokesperson said on Saturday.

There was no official word from either the External Affairs Ministry or the Home Ministry on the subject of the visas.

Barring pilgrimages — allowed in groups under the India-Pakistan Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines, 1974 — travel between the two countries has come down to a trickle. More so after Pakistan unilaterally downgraded the bilateral relationship and withdrew its high commissioner from Delhi in August 2019 after India changed the constitutional and political contours of Jammu and Kashmir.

But the process for Pakistanis to secure Indian visas had by then been made more rigorous. This happened after the revelation during the Mumbai 2008 terror attack investigations that David Headley — serving a 35-year sentence in the US after pleading guilty to 12 cases of terrorism — had travelled multiple times to India on his American passport to identify potential targets.

Additional reporting by Anita Joshua