Pakistan meet India in Super 4 clash of Asia Cup today.
CRICKET between Pakistan and India was once an opportunity for diplomacy. After conflict, amid cross-border tensions, a cricket match was perfect to lower temperatures, open dialogue, and start the long and winding road back to normality.
Cricket now deepens divisions. Pakistan and India have a great history of fierce but sporting competition but the extent of cricket’s politicisation is damaging the status of these games. India is responsible. J’accuse.
Instead of eager anticipation for Sunday’s Asia Cup match, the focus is on handshakes, cancelled press conferences, fan boycotts, and overt political statements by players. This is a game in a tournament that matters little, in a group stage that feels unnecessary, between players that are ill-matched. In the grand scheme of things it’s a nothing match but the political agendas surrounding a game may never have been so corrosive.
The blame for this lies firmly at the door of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Yes, the Pakistan Cricket Board has played its part with missteps, but the BCCI has nurtured an environment that is in direct contravention to the norms of international sport. International Cricket Council, the sport’s theoretical ruling body, is nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the BCCI — the international arm of the BCCI’s commercial operations.
This is a shameful situation. It’s false to pretend that cricket was never political. It’s probably the most politicised sport in the world, which is why the international game is surrounded by so much passion and emotion.
However, one purpose of cricket is to simultaneously allow that fervour to play out on a sports field — war minus the shooting — while the players, fans, and match officials show how it is possible to compete intensely but retain mutual respect and civility.
Cricket was politicised when it was run by Australia and England under the guise of the Imperial Cricket Conference (1909 to 1963), and then the International Cricket Conference (1964 to 1988). Despite the underlying colonialism and racism in those structures, the spirit of cricket was held up as a virtue best demonstrated on the cricket field. “It’s not cricket,” was a phrase that extended beyond the sport to highlight unfairness and wrongdoing.
Pakistan meet India in Super 4 clash of Asia Cup today
Looking back now, possibly with a Pakistan-tinted lense, the moment when the teams competing for the 1992 World Cup lined up on tiered seating, in coloured clothing, on a boat in front of the Sydney harbour bridge, with South Africa newly welcomed back to the fold, was the highest watermark in the ambitions for cricket as a truly global and unifying force. What would we give now for the naive optimism of that time?
The rest we know. Pakistan thrillingly won the first globally televised World Cup, losing to India on the way — as they tend to do in tournament cricket. The Asian nations wrestled control of the recently formed ICC — Pakistan and India working together to unseat Australia and England. Only for India to drop Asian allegiances, in particular with Pakistan, to realign themselves with Australia and England.
The pretence now is that the voice of any country other than India matters. We know why there is no sanction from the ICC, the BCCI subsidiary. But why is there silence from Australia and England, those moral high horse riders, when India refuses to uphold the spirit of cricket by refusing to shake hands with Pakistan, and India’s captain makes a pre-planned and overtly political statement at the post match conference. You can be sure if a player expressed a view on the genocide in Gaza they would be immediately censured.
The answer is money. Australia and England will say nothing because they are commercially dependent on India. The BCCI is motivated by money too. How is it that Pakistan and India end up in the same group in every global or regional tournament? It’s no mystery, of course. The cash cow needs milking.
Money is also the explanation for the BCCI playing both sides over the controversy of the Asia Cup. Despite the calls from India for a boycott against Pakistan, the BCCI wants its money from the tournament. But to appease its domestic zealots, the matches between India and Pakistan are tactically politicised.
Unfortunately in all this, cricket is barely discussed. The brief history of Pakistan India matches in tournaments is that Pakistan were the better team in the 20th Century.
India, nonetheless, did tend to beat Pakistan in ICC tournaments albeit with the air of plucky underdogs. The momentum shifted with the beginning of the 21st Century, when India’s power grew and Pakistan’s declined — on and off the field. Since then Pakistan has had moments of superiority: the 2009 T20 World Cup, the 2016 Test Championship, and the Champions Trophy of 2017.
However, the trends in cricketing performance and political power have been relentlessly downwards. Pakistan cricket is weak on and off the field, while India dominates. Pakistan still has talented players, but they are forced unready into international cricket and their talent destroyed.
The question for the politicians of Pakistan and the PCB is whether the individuals involved can put their personal agendas to one side and re-establish Pakistan as a force in international cricket? Pakistan does not have the commercial power of other countries. It is being politically outmanoeuvred and sidelined by India. The only way back, therefore, is through performance on the cricket field.
At the moment, we expect little. Pakistan are the underdogs, particularly because the batsmen have failed to deliver. They haven’t even done much against the minnows. Yet, there is potential here, and the only vague hope that Pakistan holds is that one of the batsmen, Saim Ayub or Hassan Nawaz, produces a match-winning cameo.
Maybe even Fakhar Zaman and Mohammad Haris might do something match winning. Stranger things have happened, except that there is nothing to suggest that Pakistan are in the right mindset to overcome a superior team.
Pakistan arrive at the Super Fours of the Asia Cup with a squad lacking experience and confidence, a coach lacking a track record, and a world game lacking integrity. The odds are entirely against a Pakistan win. But hope never dies in the heart of a cricket fan — and whatever the result here in Dubai, the scene of many Pakistan triumphs over India, Salman Agha’s team have every chance of finding themselves in the final in a week’s time.
Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2025
Header Image: Shaheen Shah Afridi (L) plays a shot as India’s Jasprit Bumrah watches during the Asia Cup 2025 Twenty20 international cricket match between India and Pakistan at the Dubai International Stadium in Dubai on September 14. — AFP
