India vs Pakistan: A romance reduced to a one-night affair

India-Pakistan cricket is much more than a World Cup clash but an entire generation has been deprived of its joy.

On February 19, 1999, India and Pakistan were playing at Eden Gardens. The same day, a bus carrying then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was making its way to Lahore, to initiate peace talks after the two countries had been on the brink of a nuclear standoff. Two days later, the Lahore Declaration was signed. With time, cultural exchanges and mushairas grew as India started getting a proper taste of Pakistani pop music for the first time since siblings Nazia and Zoheb Hassan rocked the airwaves almost two decades back. All seemed well. And then, Kargil happened in May, 1999. Two years later, the Parliament was attacked by terrorists. India and Pakistan though continued to play the game that bound them in such a tight embrace—cricket—in stops and starts. Till the 26/11 attack on Mumbai in 2008 put an end to everything.

India vs Pakistan: A romance reduced to a one-night affair (Getty Images)

We are gearing up for yet another India-Pakistan tie, a three-and-a-half-hour T20I this time, knowing that they haven’t played a full cricket tour since 2007. Not since 1978—when India toured Pakistan for the first time after 1961—have the two nations been off the tours roster for so long. There was a blink-and-miss limited-over series hosted by India in 2012. Barring that, India have played just 11 ODIs and three T20Is against Pakistan on neutral ground since 26/11, all as part of multi-team events like the World Cup, Champions Trophy, World Twenty20 and the Asia Cup.

As relationships between the two countries show no sign of improvement, cricket has had to do without its bilateral showstopper, depriving an entire generation of the opportunity to fully appreciate one of the greatest rivalries in sport. If you doubt that statement, it’s probably because you are young, and you have not witnessed India and Pakistan going at each other without a third party-facilitated mauka. We are talking months-long city-hopping tours here, spanning different formats in stadiums crammed with fans and under security details provided only to heads of states. Every game gave us heroes. Every tour was a celebration of rare bonhomie.

Football has Brazil vs Argentina, or Argentina vs England, or even Egypt vs Algeria. Ice hockey was a chilly proxy war field for the Cold War between the USA and former USSR. Cricket, of course, has the Ashes. But no two nations have shared a more passionate rivalry that mirrors the clash of identities born out of a bloody partition, than India and Pakistan in cricket. From Vinoo Mankad’s 8/52 in the 1952-53 series with Pakistan replying with Fazal Mahmood’s 12 wickets in the next Test, this has been a contest never lacking in context.

Zaheer Abbas’ prolific run-making; India trying to hold their own through Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath but falling to the fast and furious Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz; the arrival of Kapil Dev happened in 1978. Soon after, Pakistan captain Asif Iqbal got a standing ovation after being run out for the last time in Tests. India lost the six-Test series away in 1982-83 because they found Imran too hot to handle. And then there was Gavaskar’s final Test in 1987 in Bangalore, where Pakistan eked out a 16-run win despite his combative 96. Nine years later, during the World Cup at the same venue, Venkatesh Prasad gave Aamer Sohail a sendoff the world still remembers. Hrishikesh Kanitkar drilling that winning boundary in the 1998 Independence Cup final, Anil Kumble’s 10-wicket haul at Kotla, Sachin Tendulkar’s laboured 136 in that soul crushing defeat in Chennai, Virender Sehwag’s belligerent triple century at Multan or Rahul Dravid’s epic 270 in the series-winning Rawalpindi Test; every India-Pakistan match is a story in its own right.

“A Pakistan game is not only about that day. I remember 2003, when we played Pakistan at Centurion, my friends had started talking about it 10 months before that. It’s a different atmosphere altogether,” Tendulkar had once said. The rivalry has been a proxy for war as well as peace over decades. Soldiers on either side of the border have reportedly indulged in celebratory firing after cricket victories, but the game also served as a platform for diplomacy when in 2004 Vajpayee sent off the team with the message ‘Khel hi nahin, Dil bhi jeetiye’.

Times have changed. The BCCI, already a powerful board by the turn of the century, exercised their power by refusing to play Pakistan, essentially denying Pakistan’s board millions in revenues. During the 37-day tour of Pakistan in 2004, advertisement slots were reportedly going for up to ₹4 lakh per 10-second slot every day. That’s equivalent to around ₹12 lakh today, also the going rate in the 2019 IPL, according to Bloomberg. Already running into losses after militant attacks at home forced them to seek a new base in the UAE, Pakistan were further pushed to the edge when their players were barred from the extremely lucrative Indian Premier League in 2009. With India refusing to play Pakistan in the World Test Championship as well, there seems to be no end to this impasse. Former speedster Shoaib Akhtar has a simple solution though. “I understand India can’t come to Pakistan and Pakistan can’t go to India. But we play the Asia Cup and Champions Trophy at neutral venues. Can’t we do the same for bilateral series?,” he says on his YouTube show. “We need India and Pakistan to play for the fans and for the revenue but most importantly, for new cricketers to grow.”

It’s a quagmire that will require both governments to relent and more. Gone are the days lunch breaks in school were spent penning down world beating XIs, bringing together the best Indian batters and the best Pakistani fast bowlers. For 30 years now, the world’s best male batter continues to be Indian. But the moniker of the best fast bowling attack, unthinkable till even 20 years back, too sits nicely with this India team. In the past, it was 50-50 on the lone spinner’s spot but not anymore. Barely any Pakistani makes it to fantasy eleven today. That has been the story for some time now---India are the team to beat; Pakistan, not so much.

With that established, imagine Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rohit Sharma, R Ashwin, Mohammad Shami and Jasprit Bumrah retiring without playing a full tour against Pakistan. Wouldn’t it be a travesty for this generation to not see its heroes go up against Pakistan’s best in whites? “Indeed. Whenever there is a mention of India-Pakistan on any front, the first and foremost casualty is sport,” Bishan Singh Bedi said. “Both cricket and hockey must suffer as a result of poor political relations between the two giants. It’s a sad story of our times. And we are living with it.”

Beneath the red tape and the political posturing are memoirs, travelogues and stories that speak of mutual respect, even friendship. When he was criticised at home for praising Kohli some time back, Akhtar didn’t mince his words. “Why should I not praise Indian players and Virat Kohli? Is there any player in Pakistan, or all over the world, who comes close to Kohli?” Some stories make sense even when they don’t. “Sometimes, out of the blue, I suddenly get a message on WhatsApp from him, ‘Hi Baby.’ Make what you will of it,” wrote Sanjay Manjrekar on Akhtar in his autobiography. In Chennai, during the 1999 Test, Wasim Akram had told his team that “if the stadium is quiet, we are doing our job.” What he hadn’t anticipated was a standing ovation after stealing victory from Tendulkar’s grasp. Barely 24 hours before the 2016 India-Pakistan World Twenty20 match, a packed Eden Gardens press conference room wasn’t ready for what Shahid Afridi was about to drop on them. “I can say that the love I have got in India is something that I will always remember. We have not got this much love even from Pakistan.” It was a game changing quote. The match hadn’t become any less attritional, only the preview’s peg had changed.