Field and fraternity: on the India-Pakistan Asia Cup match

Sports, like war, can be a continuation of politics by other means, but it always makes sense to question all the forms and avatars of politics. The India-Pakistan Asia Cup match on September 14 was preceded by demands that it be suspended. Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray called it an “insult to national sentiment” while the AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi argued that commercial gain had been valued over the lives lost in Pahalgam. Petitioners had also asked the Supreme Court to cancel the game. Yet, India captain Suryakumar Yadav had decided that his team would not shake hands with its Pakistani counterpart, calling it an “alignment” with government policy. It is striking that Mr. Thackeray and Mr. Owaisi, from different ends of the political spectrum, echoed the BJP-led government’s policy of disengagement from Pakistan, revealing how this debate has been circumscribed by notions of national solidarity. But the BCCI is also partly to blame for having long operated outside the purview of sports governance law, sustained by networks that still link administrators to ruling parties. Cricket has never been immune to politics: colonial India used it to negotiate power with imperial rulers and independent India and Pakistan invested their encounters with the weight of Partition. Yet, cricket, especially in the 1970s and 2000s, opened spaces for contact, with the field allowing a rivalry that was sporting rather than military.

Today, this tradition is being eroded by the collective transformation of cricket into another theatre of conflict. Sportspersons are not soldiers and their gestures matter because they dramatise fellowship. To withdraw from even this minimal courtesy confuses solidarity with victims of terrorism with the repudiation of fellow athletes. The Asia Cup game showed how far Indian cricket has moved from the position that sport affirms the fraternity of ordinary life, with its rituals of rivalry and joy rising in defiance of violence and bloodshed. It is bad enough that the ICC places the India and the Pakistan teams in the same group in multilateral tournaments, creating repetitive match-ups to go with the inordinate influence the BCCI exerts on these events. Rather than compound these artificialities, Suryakumar and team should adopt the more responsible course and restore hand-shaking for the rest of the tournament. Sport is political, but it does not have to be war minus the shooting. International contests might mimic warfare, but the whole point of sport is lost if sportspersons behave as proxies of political leaders seeking to inflame passions to polarise people.