Supporting and Unsporting

In the joint Indian military press briefings that were held to update the media on the progress of Operation Sindoor, a stark moment of contrast between real warriors and keyboard wannabe warriors was on display. An overexcited, headline seeking, warmonger of a journalist asked the panel something to the effect of when would they proceed to an all-out war against Pakistan. The answer from the Navy representative was sharp and clear. He said “Madam, our job is not to go to war. Our job is to end it.”

For the professionals who put their colleagues’ or their own lives at risk on the front, war is necessarily focused, measured and non-escalatory in the pursuit of peace. For the kind of lowlifes who abused even the widow of Navy officer Lieutenant Vinay Narwal murdered in Pahalgam, for asking Indians not to fall for Pakistan’s divisive strategies, war is just another occasion for fake patriotism, political agendas and public display of their ignorant biases, safe in the knowledge that they are hundreds of miles away from any flying bullets or shrapnel.

Which is most likely the reason why my landlord needed to ask me the question “India-Pakistan match ho rahaa hai. Dekhoge nahin?” [India-Pakistan cricket is on. Won’t you watch?] and in a first for the 41 years of my existence, my answer has been No twice in the past week and a half. As a dyed in blue devotee of the Indian cricket team and of cricket, it was a question that would never need to be asked of me as I would be already watching. Experiencing the nation v/s nation narrative of international cricket and the intense play-by-play pressure of squaring off with our neighbour was an opportunity I had never passed on no matter where in the world I was.

Now, this is not the first time that India and Pakistan are playing in the aftermath of a violent act of terrorism supported by Islamabad. While hundreds of millions watch this contest for the intense cricket it produces, India-Pakistan also draws the worst type whose only interaction with cricket is for India-Pakistan matches. Such has been our volatile geopolitical reality for decades. Yet in this Asia Cup’s no handshake environment, where that basic courtesy to each other was shelved, fuelled further by simulations of planes being shot down and machine guns being fired, multiple sanctities have been violated.

War is a failure of humanity. Sport, on the other hand, is a celebration of it. War, very aptly described as old men sending out young men to die, is an all-around tragedy where both the victor and the vanquished are traumatized for life despite all the sugarcoating of glory put around it. Sport, in contrast, allows for the most intense competitiveness to be exercised but within a framework that recognizes and respects the slim margins of fate scripted into it. To club war and sport together is a travesty and confusing a soldier with a sportsperson is disrespectful to both.

If the atmosphere was not normalized enough for a team to acknowledge a fellow team’s efforts in a sport that both teams clearly love as do billions of their countrymen, then why play each other at all? Play is the key word. Despite all the emotions we invest into cricketers fiddling with a small sphere, a plank of wood, and physics, cricket is play. If the 25 lives so horrifically taken by terrorists in Pahalgam and the lives put on the line by our military to defend our security were to be really respected, is not shaking hands really an appropriate response?

Weirdly for a sub-continent brutalized and intentionally destabilized by British planning, an originally British sport manages to bring it together somewhat – cricket unites gullies, roads and maidaans with its simple tales of flashy batsmen seeking immortality as toiling bowlers with flying fieldsmen deny them the same. But it is patently unfair to expect this beautiful game of angles and flair to bear the burden of politically motivated conflicts that flare in cruel ignorance of the daily needs of their citizens. Cricket’s poetic script of ups and downs, edges and sixes should not be a proxy for nasty war but an escape from it.

What then of this Sunday’s India-Pakistan final, you ask? I feel that when even the two militaries which had engaged in a vicious short-lived conflict of Operation Sindoor reached terms for a ceasefire, are pampered billionaire cricketers or extremist fans claiming to be more soldier than them? The Pakistan government had to spin their military defeat into alternative realities for their citizens but that need not intrude into the field of play. The war is over. An India-Pakistan cricket game should be just that, an epic contest in and of itself, but I do sincerely hope that the two teams are sporting enough to shake on it.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2025/09/supporting-and-unsporting.html]