Kolkata: Air raid sirens and blackouts, shelled out borders and drones being knocked out of the sky by missiles screeching from batteries parked in city neighbourhoods — those evenings weren’t that long ago as they now feel. The IPL had to be paused, teams disbanded and foreign players bundled into minivans and then on to chartered flights, uncertain of resumption. War paused cricket that day, but it’s also true that there is no bigger proxy of our geopolitical reality than cricket.
To that end, it’s strange how the build-up to this India-Pakistan match at the T20 Asia Cup on Sunday has been devoid of the usual, tension-gripping hype. It’s never ‘just another match’ to the players but at ground zero, it’s always headier and unnerving. This time though, it feels a little different, a bit more guarded. Bragging points up for grabs of course, but nothing too pointed, personal or political, a line everyone seemed to be toeing in the build-up to Sunday.
“An India-Pakistan game is always a competitive game. So, we would rather focus on that,” said India batting coach Sitanshu Kotak. Fielding coach Ryan ten Doeschate relayed Gautam Gambhir’s message of focusing on cricket. “It is a very sensitive issue,” he said on Saturday. “Players feel the emotion and sentiments of the public. This is what we have discussed in the team meetings. Players are here to play cricket. We are following government instructions.” Even Saim Ayub, only 23, seemed well-rehearsed. “We are not only looking forward to the India-Pakistan match, our main goal is to win the tournament,” he said.
Ayub is understandably positive, but on paper these are lofty claims. India are the world champions, a stronger batting side, have better bowlers and allrounders, and are fitter and more well-versed with this format than any other international side. So jampacked are they right now with freakishly good talent that Sanju Samson might have to bat at No.5 or 6 to be able to find a place in the eleven. That’s the other thing about this team —they are open to possibilities, and hence highly adaptable.
“Everyone in our line-up is capable of batting anywhere and finishing games,” said Kotak. “We have four to five aggressive players. Nothing is fixed. Everyone knows their role and is ready for any situation.” The top three is more or less fixed. Abhishek Sharma opens with Shubman Gill, followed by Suryakumar Yadav or Tilak Varma, depending on whether India wants to strictly maintain a left-right combination. “For openers and No.3, we think of specific players. After that, everyone is prepared mentally and skill-wise to bat at any number. That’s a good sign.”
What is not a good sign is how this fixture’s credibility is taking hit upon hit. India-Pakistan was always the money spinner of any tournament, but for the first time it is not finding many takers, even for a Sunday game. This points to two possibilities — either the nation’s emotion invested in the rivalry has become too grave to be satiated by a cricket match, or the quality of the rivalry isn’t good enough to drop everything else and head to the stadium. You will never know if the first holds, but the second possibility definitely makes sense.
Without bilateral ties, India-Pakistan was supposed to be a rare meeting. But they have met every year since 2021, and barring the first match, India have been overwhelmingly dominant. Pitted against each other, Pakistan clearly look the ones playing catchup, especially after purging their side of batting stars Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan. So less is their calculated chance of winning this game that the neutral watcher can take the result for granted, a state not seen till definitely the 2019 ODI World Cup.
This Pakistan side is young and raw though, with some promising players having come through the system. Like Sufiyan Muqeem, the left-arm wrist spinner, who is proving to be very difficult to score off. Hasan Nawaz is another emerging star with the reputation of giving Pakistan’s innings the impetus they need beyond the Powerplay. To expect the next line of cricketers to break the ceiling could prove too much for Pakistan, but they have not left themselves with much of a choice. That is the new normal of the India-Pakistan cricket match we have to live with, till the results suggest otherwise.
