Keep to cricket

Today India takes on Pakistan in Mohali. Or rephrase that slightly and say: today eleven Indians will play a game of cricket with eleven Pakistanis. Between those two phrases,the one pithy and confrontational,the other less so but considerably more accurate,lies so much of the story of India-Pakistan sport and relations. As with other countries that have fraught,oppositional histories,it is easy to look at sporting encounters between India and Pakistan through the lens of political and social confrontation. Succumbing to that temptation can create for us the febrile cricket-is-war environment were having to endure today; but,even more importantly,it does a disservice to the two teams,to the sport they are playing,and the stage they are playing it on; and it does a disservice to that shared history that we are trying to echo in our approach to what is,after all,just another game of cricket.

Games are games,and games need good manners,cricket in particular. They need sportsmanship on the pitch and cordiality off it. It is that cordiality and perhaps something more that lies behind the welcome that Pakistani fans will receive in hospitable,outward-looking Punjab. It is that cordiality that underlines Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs invitation to his Pakistani opposite number to watch the match,and Yousaf Raza Gilanis acceptance. Take the cordiality as what it is: the necessary accompaniment to a great sporting moment.

If it opens up space for genuine diplomacy,or for reduction of the emotional distance between the two countries populations,that is wonderful; but that is not the point.

Cricket has to carry so much,when it comes to India and Pakistan. It is not only the sole uncontested emotional location for so many peoples nationalism in South Asia,but it is also,sadly,our only uncontested common idiom,shared cultural and literary traditions notwithstanding. Cricket carries,too,the burden of providing often facile insight into national character,the power of institutions,the purity of professionalism,the machismo of the dominant culture. These are burdens sport sometimes has to shrug off and this is one of those times. When eleven Pakistanis play a game of cricket with eleven Indians today,there will be,even without taking on the weight of those histories,enough great narratives worth following: Tendulkar,poised just short of a century of centuries,playing in what could be his last World Cup match; Afridi,leading from the front,miraculously pulling together his team; Yuvraj,scripting his own big-hitting redemption. Its just a game but what a game.