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Where does India and Pakistan cricket go from here?
India and Pakistan's cricket rivalry raises questions about respect and conduct as they prepare for their fourth match in three weeks amid rising nationalism.
On October 5, India and Pakistan meet again for the fourth time in less than three weeks to play a cricket match.
At the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025, with India as hosts. The match will be played in Sri Lanka because well... Moot question: will there be handshakes? If handshakes are banned, should captains exchange the team sheets only through the referee? What if the exchange leads to Indian hands accidently touching Pakistani? Will that be a gross violation of BCCI’s new Patriot Act? Is eye contact going to be measured too?
Now that the men on both sides have shown off their muscular nationalism, are the women cricketers now duty bound to continue with this tin-can opera? Or have host broadcasters decided that snarling women can’t match bearded, tattooed men making faces?
Where does India and Pakistan cricket go from here? After the Asia Cup, neither has any moral high ground left in cricket. If neither side or their ‘elders’ believe they owe the sport itself basic respect when the two get together, why bother to play at all?
Anything is better than this – to steal a friend’s accurate description – “bottomless stupidity”. Better than weaponising cricket. So cut ties, no match, no handshake, no fuss and world cricket will not collapse financially if there is no India v Pakistan. No need to waste Jasprit Bumrah’s workload management, Hardik Pandya’s delicate constitution, Kuldeep Yadav’s game-day-quota on these matches, better to save Abhishek Sharma’s destined runs for the ICC T20 World Cup. (Oh but…) At the Asia Cup, the terrific cricket played by the Indians was used merely as a prop in a larger puppet theatre. Where Act 1, Scene 1 played out when the team was given the official go-ahead to play Pakistan. Apart from the uber-energised social media chest beaters, there is also another large group of Indian fans that is sad and angry that the team’s play has been invisibilised.
Overwhelmed by the surround sound deliberately set on high to dominate narratives, headlines, TV debate topics and mind space. Cricket was made secondary.
The BCCI ‘s plans to complain to the ICC in November about the conduct of Asian Cricket Council president /PCB chairman/ Pakistan interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, is another round of narrative building. The ICC is currently top candidate for the most dysfunctional global ruling body award – particularly among the influential sports organisations boasting reach and revenues.
Of the other multi-nation, megabuck sporting bodies, FIFA doesn’t indulge in group cooking like ICC and affiliates do by placing India and Pakistan in the same group at every multi-lateral event. At the Olympics, actions are taken when handshakes are refused. (Currently they’re trying to deal with athletes who refused to shake hands with Israeli athletes in Paris 2024).
At the ICC meeting in November expect the worst outcomes – fines, punishments, bans of Naqvi and/or Pakistan cricket. Simply because Pakistan cricket carries very little weight in the ICC compared to the Indians who hold the two top posts in the organisation.
In any case, ICC is yet to comment on the most severe rupture in international cricket relations of this century. Unless it is foolish to expect that the ICC wants the matter sorted in the interests of the game they supposedly serve. Chairman Jay Shah, very visible on global stages otherwise, has not issued any statement about this rupture or what their next steps will be. No meeting has been called to resolve the matter. lf both Shah and his CEO, Sanjog Gupta, who are Indians, consider the matter patriotically prickly, they could recuse themselves.
In any other serious organisation (other than ICC playschool) a neutral negotiator would be found in their executive board. Or its independent director called in to help. Except the ICC has gone a year without an independent director after Indira Nooyi’s departure last June. And no, there’s no woman member on the Board.
For further proof of ICC’s fundamental dysfunction is the report that ICC match referee Andy Pycroft was told “only minutes before the toss” (before the first Indo-Pak match) that the two captains would not shake hand. Now that is a fig leaf of the kind that even a marble statue would refuse to take seriously.
In the run-up to games where tension is simmering, (more often than not that’s been India v Pak) ICC match referees can exercise their power. They have called in captains, coaches and managers on both sides and laid down the rules of engagement, clearly stating that these are the protocols to be followed and what to be mindful of. The meeting signals referee-watch, with players and teams on alert.
It would be surprising if it emerges that Pycroft didn’t hold such a meeting before the first India-Pakistan Asia Cup match. If he did and was still disobeyed “only minutes before the toss” it proves two things. That he is not as effective a match referee as he needed to be. And Indian cricket, world cricket’s toughest guy, is happy to treat the sport as a tool to be used, not a gift to be treasured. Today, Indian and Pakistani cricketers, current and former, their thought leaders/ commentariat find themselves comfortably paddling in a pool of patriotism. And just like in that frog experiment, the temperature of the water will be raised half a degree at a time. Before we know it, they will metaphorically be boiled into a mush. Because their sport is completely captured and our sport is not ours any more.
