Indo-Pak cricket rivalry 2

Encounters between India and Pakistan are generally considered as the biggest rivalry in cricket. In the past, some of the games between the two neighbours have produced exciting, nail-biting thrillers. Often, tickets for the matches featuring both teams get sold out quickly while millions of fans remain glued in front of television. 

Ironically, the Asia Cup contest last Sunday between the two traditional rivals did not resemble the typical glamour and aura associated with Indo-Pak cricket games. Hundreds of tickets remained unsold, and there were a number of empty seats at the ground. The match itself was a boring affair with India cruising to a comfortable victory. Most of the cricket matches between India and Pakistan in the recent past have been one-sided games with India beating their opponent convincingly, failing to live up to the pre-match hype.

Nevertheless, despite the cricketing performance on the match failing to grab any meaningful attention, what occurred after the game had finished dominated the headlines and created a storm of controversy. Although it is customary for cricketers of the two competing sides to shake hands and exchange pleasantries at the end of a game, the Indian cricketers refused to indulge in the celebrated ritual at the contest last week.

No bilateral cricket engagements have taken place between India and Pakistan since 2012 but both continue to play against each other in multilateral tournaments. Even in the past, the two sides continued to play at neutral venues and in spite of the volatile ties between the neighbouring states, the players of the two countries interacted with each other and the bonhomie as well as camaraderie among them was in stark contrast to the mistrust and estrangement between the political administrations of the two nuclear-armed states. To the credit of players of both nations, none of them brought geopolitical hostility to the cricket field.

What made the difference this time around? This was the first cricketing contest between the two countries after Pahalgam terror attack, in which 26 civilians were killed in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of providing support to the terror attack. In response, India carried out Operation Sindoor, which launched missile strikes on Pakistan. The two warring parties fought for over four days last May.

With the unfortunate incident still fresh in the minds of the Indian public, there was a huge public outcry for the Indian team to boycott the match against Pakistan. Even India’s opposition parties criticised the country’s Cricket Board and the government for not directing the cricketers to avoid the clash against their arch enemy. Some even recalled the social media posts shared by few of the Pakistani cricketers that insulted the dignity of the Indian armed forces during the conflict to justify such an extreme action.

As the public sentiment was strongly in favour of forfeiting the cricket match, both the government of India, which is led by Hindu nationalistic BJP, and India’s Cricket Board would have felt the pressure. India’s current coach Gautam Gambhir is a former BJP parliamentarian. The drastic action by the Indian cricketers has been perceived as a ploy to pacify the outrage for not boycotting the game. At the game’s presentation ceremony, the Indian captain Suryakmar Yadav declared that they stood with the families of the victims of Pahalgam terror attack, and dedicated their win to the armed forces who took part in Operation Sindoor.

In the aftermath of this controversial incident, some have opined that cricket and sports in general should not be unduly influenced by politics. In reality though, sports and politics, particularly in South Asia, have always been inextricably intertwined. Sports have always been used as a platform to communicate political views everywhere in the world and no matter what the critics may say it will continue to happen in the future too.