It was February 2004, just ahead of India’s first full cricket tour of Pakistan in more than a decade. Then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf was keen to host a Test in Karachi and asked for India’s approval but he never got it, recalls former intelligence and security official Yashovardhan Azad in his new book.LK Advani, the then deputy prime minister, played a key role in the entire episode, Azad writes in the recently published “Policing the Republic: An Inside View of How India Fights Corruption and Crime, and Protects Rights”.Azad was head of the three-member advance security team that conducted a recce of all cricket venues in Pakistan and submitted its report recommending the tour but with the caveat of no Tests in either Karachi or Peshawar. It cleared Multan, Rawalpindi and Lahore for Tests.Soon after, he received a call from Advani on the RAX (Restricted Area Exchange) phone, Azad says, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the security challenges surrounding the tour.“Yashovardhan ji, Karachi main kya hum Test match nahi kara sakte hain?” (Can’t we have a Test match in Karachi?) I tried to explain that Karachi and Peshawar had been left out as Test match venues because of the high threat perception and the risk of long exposure in these regions.“He asked me if I could reconsider and bring it up with the director of the IB, saying he would also call him regarding this,” Azad says in the chapter, “Cricket Diplomacy, Security and Politics”.The tour began in March with a one-day in Karachi and went on till April.The prospect of managing security for a Test match in Karachi “unnerved” Azad, so he immediately called his school friend Arun Singh — then joint secretary covering Pakistan in the Ministry of External Affairs — who informed him that Musharraf had made the request.“I asked him why this query had come directly from the Deputy PM himself. Arun informed me that it was president Musharraf’s request, as conveyed by our foreign minister. Advani could have easily overruled us, but he went by the security advice, and the schedule approved by the security team remain unchanged,” Azad recounts in the book.It was only the beginning.Azad, who went on to head the security unit for the Indian team on the tour, also remembers the threats and security concerns surrounding the Karachi one-dayer.    This included a threat from the “terrorist group to the Indian team” and the Madrid train bombings by Al-Qaeda terrorists on March 11, 2004, which killed 193 persons and injured around 2,000, while the Indian team was practising ahead of its one-day international in Karachi.“Al-Qaeda claimed that the action was to protest against Spain’s troops fighting in Iraq. From my intelligence, I was aware that top Al-Qaeda operatives were based in tribal and urban centres of Pakistan.“I shared the matter with Manager RS Shetty and Coach Wright (John), and we decided to keep silent as were flying to Karachi the next day to play the first one dayer,” he explained.Azad subsequently also received a call from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad conveying a RAW input about a terrorist threat to the Indian team.Though “details were unavailable”, the intelligence came from a credible source and specifically “mentioned Karachi and the Indian team”, according to the book.  “Instructions were given to the team that the baggage would be loaded in the morning itself, since we would go straight to the airport after the match,” he writes in the book.The book also narrates a lighter moment involving cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and the elaborate security arrangements during the tour.Azad recalls that while the team was at the Islamabad airport, Tendulkar, sitting next to him, pointed to the tall, black-suited security personnel carrying black briefcases and innocently asked, “Is it a nuclear button?”“When I told him about jammers, he bombarded me with questions till he was fully satisfied. It was wonderful to interact with such great cricketers, who had an interest in knowing things beyond their profession,” he concluded.India was led by Sourav Ganguly in the historic tour, dubbed Friendship Tour. It won the ODI series 3-2 and captured the Test series 2-1.“Policing the Republic”, priced at Rs 699 and published by Bloomsbury India, claims to cover “difficult ground that few insiders have been willing to write about”.