An invaluable all-rounder of Don Bradman’s “Invincible” team of the late 1940s, Keith Miller once had to crash-land his fighter jet during World War II. Going to work in his Royal Australian Air Force fatigues before he donned the Baggy Green, Miller had seen death from close quarters while taking on the Germans in the skies.
During his second innings, in the middle of a tense Ashes tour, the straight-talking Aussie was once asked about the pressure of playing against arch-rivals England. Folklore has it that Miller gave an almighty scoff followed by these famous lines: “Pressure is a Messerschmitt (German fighter jet) up your a**e. Playing cricket is not.”
Probably the only man in history to have undertaken dangerous sorties and played top-level cricket, Miller underlined the ridiculousness of comparing brutal confrontations on a battlefield with the far more genteel and entertaining sporting face-offs.
But in this Asia Cup, which took place months after the mostly aerial conflict between India and Pakistan, cricketers, administrators and top politicians of the two nations have tried to merge these two worlds. They have overplayed cricket’s significance and symbolism.
All through the tournament, players in both blue and green have behaved like fighter jocks, with frequent war references and juvenile one-upmanship. If one day a Pakistan player, fielding on the fence where the Indian fans were seated, mimicked an aircraft in free-fall, in the next match, an Indian bowler did the same after uprooting his stumps. Press conferences have indulged in “whataboutery” and “who started it” debates.
Media boxes — ideally, islands of neutrality in an emotionally charged atmosphere — haven’t remained untouched, either. There have been abusive exchanges between reporters from both sides of the border during the India-Pakistan games. Here, too, reminders of military operations and unverified claims of death and destruction have been used by both sides to win debates.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi described India’s win in the final as “Operation Sindoor on the games field”. Before the final, Mohsin Naqvi, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief — who is also his country’s Interior Minister — had reposted on social media an image of his top players in olive air force dungarees. The BCCI secretary, Devajit Saikia, would add his bit. “Our armed forces have delivered it in the border area, now the same thing has been repeated in Dubai… It was Operation Sindoor earlier and now it is Operation Tilak,” he said, referring to the incredibly mature knock by Man of the Match Tilak Varma that took India home in the final.
No one seems to be worried about hanging way too much on a game of glorious uncertainties. This Asia Cup wasn’t the last time India and Pakistan played cricket; it wasn’t some end-of-the-world apocalyptic duel. There will be more rounds and different results, and the shoe could well be on the other foot. In a week’s time, the India and Pakistan women’s teams will be meeting in a World Cup game. They lock horns at a neutral venue: Colombo, Sri Lanka. Next year, the men will meet again, this time for the World T20. As the edge-of-the-seat Asia Cup final showed, cricket, especially the T20 format, is a sport of fine margins.
Had the Pakistan wicket-keeper not fluffed an easy run-out, the day’s hero, Varma, wouldn’t have been around to pull off a miracle. Had Pakistan not committed hara-kiri and had their middle- and lower- order batsmen not collapsed in a heap, India might have failed to win this tense race. A slip-up here, a rub-of-green there and the tide could have turned. Had Pakistan won the final, would that have symbolised their military superiority over India?
But when victory on a cricket field is less about celebrating your own success and more about being hurtful towards others, lines get crossed. When the stakes are so illogically high, watching cricket ceases to be a pleasurable pursuit and becomes a nerve-jangling ordeal.
It isn’t wise to allow the pride of a nation and its capability in safe-guarding its borders to be judged by the result of a cricket match. Sport is a great leveller and it has a habit of pulling down the over-confident and those who don’t respect its vagaries. Players need to guard their turf; they don’t need non-cricket actors setting the agenda for them.
Over the last fortnight, Suryakumar Yadav has broken a longstanding captain’s code. After his team’s second win in the tournament over Pakistan, he declared the end of cricket’s most storied rivalry. Without any provocation, he said that Pakistan was no longer a match for India. Even if statistics show that Indians win more often these days, captains as a rule don’t write off their rivals.
Far more competent batsmen and much more successful captains than Suryakumar — Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, M S Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma — have taken the dais after even grander wins over Pakistan, but none has shown this arrogance. Indian captains, historically, are known for their grace and quiet confidence in their teams; they never made such sweeping statements of superiority. They knew how to respect rivals and rivalry. Amidst the worst political tensions, they shook hands and kept the chatter to cricket.
Operation Tilak was an exemplary cricketing triumph, a rare instance of a batsman keeping his poise during a difficult chase in a high-pressure final. It doesn’t need any metaverse, cosplaying references. Operation Sindoor was a compulsion with very different consequences.
In sport, at worst, a defeat means a heartbreak, tears shed into a towel soaked with sweat and a few days of social media trolling. Wars are grim affairs. Unlike in cricket, there is no DRS or second chance. Wars end in coffins reaching homes, orphans, widows and families taking a lifetime to deal with the loss. War offers real do-or-die situations, not the ones cricket writers allude to in their reports. Let’s not belittle the dogfights of military jets in the sky by comparing them to a bat-ball contest in the slog overs.
sandeep.dwivedi@expressindia.com
