India-Pakistan Cricket Rivalry: A War Without Shooting

On the eve of India’s opening match of the T20 World Cup in Australia against Pakistan Virat Kohli was in the nets just outside the cavernous Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG or simply ‘The G’). He had taken a few throw-downs from the support staff and was about to face the bowlers for a proper hit.

“Pakistan Zindabad,” yelled a group of 25 or so fans in green shirts. “Bharat Mata ki Jai,” came the response, the sound of which drowned out any Pakistani support.

Cricket has always triggered jingoism in India. Though lovers of the sport might be familiar with the Orwellian phrase “war minus the shooting”, as applied to a India–Pakistan clash, these days the situation is more shooting minus the war. Skirmishes happen across the border all the time with both countries stopping just short of an all-out war.

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However, social media and TV channels whip up emotions which are more often than not toxic and which come camouflaged as nationalism. Despite the changing nuances of the India–Pakistan relationship, a big game between the two nations always brings an edge and pressure.

At the MCG, while Kohli appreciated the support and the sentiment, it was hardly conducive for batting. Out in the middle, the fans are at least 100 m away, often more. Here at the nets, they were barely 10 m away. Vikram Rathour, the batting coach, had to walk over to the fans and request them to pipe down, at least for the time between ball being delivered and bat meeting it.

“Fans at the stadium play a massive part, especially at the MCG when the majority of 90,000 fans came together the other day and sang the national anthem in unison. It just lifts you and motivates you,” says Robin Uthappa, who was part of the Indian team that beat Pakistan to lift the T20 World Cup in South Africa. “It makes you want to perform that much more. When the crowd is behind you or is chanting your name, it gives you goose bumps. Equally, if a player is feeling down and he hears his name being chanted, it can change the way he looks at things.”

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On D Day, all trains leading to Richmond Station were packed with fans, Indians outnumbering Pakistanis comfortably, though the men in green showed up in fairly large numbers, hours before the scheduled start of the match. Some of them did not even have tickets to watch the game. Mohammad Nawaz, originally from Lahore, was one such fan. “Look bhaijaan, not everyone can get tickets, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be part of the India–Pakistan match,” he explained. “I can come here and at least cheer for my team as they come in the bus and get into the ground.”

There were many Indians who felt the same way. Dileep Krishna, who has been in Melbourne for the last seven years, working in the software industry, was outside the ground with his wife and toddler. “My kid is too young to sit and watch the full match,” he said. “We didn’t want to take a chance and waste money on tickets. But at least, we can come here to the fan zone, watch for some time and take some photos with the MCG in the background. When she grows up she may thank me.”

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The India–Pakistan fan rivalry has a distinct flavour in Australia than in England. In Australia, there is a greater sense of camaraderie, a friendly leg-pulling rat­her than any real animosity or anger. In England, things can turn ugly very quickly in the stands, and while it was once believed that the free-flowing lager might be one of the catalysts, you can get beer in the stands in Australia as well.

One of the reasons was that Indians and Pakistanis worked together in various firms, and whichever team won on Sunday, they had to return to their routine grind the following day. Though this is also true for England, that friendly demeanour is missing among the fans there. In the recent past, in fact, things have sometimes taken a volatile turn, as it happened at the 2019 World Cup in England. Chants of “Mandir yahin banega (We shall build the temple here itself)” rang around Southampton.

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“There is every reason for sport to inspire patriotic feelings. In Hobsbawm’s oft-quoted dictum, ‘An imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people.’ That is because a sporting event between nations provides instant, emphatic, unarguable demonstration of superiority without the cost of blood or treasure,” says historian, author and journalist, Gideon Haigh. “Cricket’s ancientness reinforces that potential. We are born into rivalries that long predate us and we know will long outlive us; we become heir to previous successes and face the responsibility of maintaining them in order to stave off creeping sensations of national degeneration.”

Unlike Bollywood movies that often fan jingoism, in the name of being patriotic or nationalistic, cricket is a real, unscripted drama. India and Pakistan have provided some ext­r­e­mely turgid Test cricket over the years, with neither team wanting to take the risk of losing and therefore both settling for a draw. There is no such option in limited overs cricket. This is definitely winner-take-all, with stakes much higher in World Cup matches. It is the biggest tournament around. With India and Pakistan not playing bilaterally, the World Cup is where the archrivals meet the most, followed by the Cha­mpions Trophy and the Asia Cup.

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But to be at the grounds and among the fans at an India–Pakistan match is not always about blood boiling. There are tender moments, too. For example, in the most recent clash, there was a time when a Pakistan bowler was trying to get the attention of the fielder on the fence at third man. But he could not hear the bowler amidst the MCG din. Hardik Pandya, who was batting, called out the fielder and pointed to the bowler, who then got what he wanted. Similarly, when Virat Kohli was leading the chase, he had a shoelace coming untied. He walked to the umpire for assistance, but the bowler saw this and quickly went down on one knee to assist Kohli.

It is obvious that the camaraderie among the players of both teams has always been high. On either side of the border, they know just how much is at stake.

“I actually don’t think there’s an opportunity to forge friendships with Pakistani players, because we play them few and far between in ICC tournaments. There is a general sense of respect as athletes,” says Uthappa. “As far as playing on the field is concerned, we understand what a dangerous team they are. We knew that they could pull a rabbit out of the hat at any time. With all the history that India–Pakistan have had, the sense of rivalry added a fierce sense of competition on the field. Every time you played, you wanted to make it count. There was pride in maintaining our record against them in ICC events and they also wanted to set the record straight.”

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Where it gets really ugly is on social media. When all is well—those brief moments of calm—it is almost possible to forget that Mohammad Shami is told to “Go back to Pakistan” when he has a bad day that takes the match away from India. It is almost possible to leave behind Arshdeep Singh being branded a Khalistani when he dropped a catch in a match against Pakistan.

Something interesting has unfolded over the last few years, however. The Pakistan–Afghanistan cricket rivalry has overshadowed India–Pakistan for ill-tempered behaviour on the field and hooliganism in the stands. It is a popular belief among Afghans that their Pakistani brothers have not done enough for them politically, even if the opposite is true in cricket.

Cricket’s most famous rivalry, the Ashes series, is much more about cricket. England first played Australia in a Test match in 1876–77, and that history and tradition ensure that the intensity of the series never dips.

Let us come back to India and Pakistan for a mom­ent. The latest bit of friction has broken out between the cricket boards of the two countries. The Asian Cricket Council (ACC) had announced that the 2023 Asia Cup would be hosted by Pakistan, where preparations for the tournament were already well underway. A few months later, however, the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) categorically stated that India would not travel to Pakistan for the Asia Cup and that the tournament would be played at some neutral venue. The one sticking point in this is that the president of the ACC and the secretary of the BCCI is the same man, Jay Shah.

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The cricket boards of both teams want India and Pakistan to play each other as much as possible—this is undoubtedly commercially the most valuable property in cricket today. “Passions wax and wane.  In some ways, the rise of domestic T20, where teams congregate and dissolve every season, has made all allegiances temporary and contingent,” says Haigh. “The jingoism is now more at the board table. The inability to repair cricket rela­tions between India and Pakistan is unfortunately a continuation of foreign policy by sporting means—this is the modern version of what Orwell called war minus the shooting.”

But, there is no way to make these things happen, even if all parties want them. This is because there are bigger forces at play behind the scenes, invisible but which we can sense, which are hell bent on keeping India and Pakistan apart. This is what fuels the jingoism in cricket as well.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Fuelling Jingoism")

(Views expressed are personal)

Anand Vasu is an award-winning cricket journalist who has co-authored Cricket Drona: For the Love of Vasoo Paranjape