India vs Pakan: No war, no shooting; just fight to be Miandad, Joginder, not Chetan Sharma, Misbah | Cricket News

However hard the TV broadcasters try to beat the war drums, India vs Pakan cricket, these days, is anything but ‘war minus the shooting’. However hard the billboard arts try to photoshop Rohit Sharma and Mohammad Rizwan to make them appear menacing, the two naturally congenial captains still can’t pass off as ruthless generals leading bloodthirsty armies.That old narrative promoting cricket’s most storied der has got boring and inaccurate but, somehow it has survived. The caricaturing of this high-stakes sporting contest needs to stop. Indo-Pak cricket needs to be saved from the marketers who seem hell-bent on reducing this many-layered rivalry into a one-dimensional cliché.
It is these unimaginative war references that justify the mixing of sports and politics and the slamming of the cricket door between the two neighbours, whose players famously get along and whose fans have never waged pitched battles in the stands.
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This Sunday, India and Pakan will meet again and those familiar voices are on air again. Netflix has timed the airing of its documentary ‘The Greatest Rivalry’ with the ICC Champions Trophy’s showcase game. Its promo video has visuals of tanks blasting shells on the border and lung-busting cries high-on-aggro guards at the Wagah ceremony every evening.
 
Javed Miandad mocks Kiran More (Express File)
JioHotstar flashes images of a Pakan player with a bloodied face. It also has scary close-ups of angry fans with war paint on their faces. Even MS Dhoni is seen extolling fans to sledge. How long can Javed Miandad mimicking Kiran More’s jumping-jack routine be interpreted as some Kargil-like confrontation? Well, it has been more than 30 years but Miandad is still leaping on the screen. Have a heart, he is 67 now.
Why has it taken the world so long to realise that the arenas where these storied Blue vs Green games are played aren’t battlefields but theatres of dreams. These sporting face-offs are chess over 22 yards, exhibition of exquisite cricketing skills and an opportunity for players to be permanently housed in the memories of fans.
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On such days, runs and wickets carry more weight and value. These are the games where legends are made and myths shaped. These are the contests that give teams and players their identity that get pasted on memories for years and sometime for ever. Most times unfairly.
Take two much-discussed Indo-Pak finals – the 1986 Austral-Asia Cup and the 2007 ICC World T20. Miandad, the manipulator of strike with an expert at nicking singles, is remembered as a six-hitting finisher. Chetan Sharma, with a World Cup hundred and hat-trick to his name, can’t get the ‘last ball full-toss’ albatross off his neck.
Hory will see Joginder Sharma, a man with a very modest international record, as a nerveless bowler. As for Misbah-ul-Haq, the highly skillful batsman blessed with a calm cricketing mind, he carries on his back forever the ‘brain fade’ monkey. This is what India-Pakan games are all about and that’s why the pressure.
Joginder Sharma represented India in four ODIs and four T20Is over the course of his career. (FILE)
So India might have sailed past Bangladesh and Pakan might have rolled over without a fight against New Zealand in their opening games, but only the naive would get into predicting the result of the most-watched game of the tournament.Story continues below this ad
It’s the attention of the millions of eye-balls that makes even untested players do extraordinary feats on days when streets go empty in the sub-continent. Go to the Indo-Pak cricket archives to find out why Manzoor Elahi or Saleem Yousuf still get free lunches in Pakan for the match-winning 50s they scored against India or why Atul Bedade still gets asked about the four sixes he hit in a Sharjah game which India lost. This is why the newbies – Pakan’s Salman Agha, Khushdil Shah, Abrar Ahmed or India’s Harshit Rana – will fancy their chances to scoop the perks on offer at the Dubai game.
Even a single magical stroke or a dream ball can get tagged to a cricketer forever. Virat Kohli’s backfoot six down the ground, Sachin Tendulkar’s stunning upper cut, Mohammad Amir’s cutter, Shaheen Afridi’s in-swinger … they are still shared on WhatsApp groups of cricket fans. This Sunday, Kohli, Rohit, Babar Azam, Rizwan would want immortality in winning games.
Defining moments
Over the years, the changing trends in India-Pakan cricket results would go a long way in how the world perceived them. These games were the markers that decided the collective psyche and character of the two teams. So around the mid- 1980s – post Miandad’s and subsequently Elahi’s match-winning efforts – Pakan was seen as a team with a chip on the shoulder and a firm belief that they could get the better of India regardless of the match situation. Pakan were called aggressive, India mild-mannered and nervy. The latter lost to Pakan on Fridays and at Sharjah – India banked on this pessimism to make peace with their serial defeats.
The wheels would move with time. The 90s brought about a change. That was the time when war and regional geo-politics would see the snapping of ties between India and Pakan. Sharjah would get boycotted and ICC events would be the meeting stage for the two teams. The decade would expose Pakan cricket’s ugly belly. Their top cricketers would have match-fixing stains on them. Political uncertainty would further impact the game.Story continues below this ad
Pakan’s captain Babar Azam, right, and India’s captain Rohit Sharma walk into the field before the start of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup cricket match between India and Pakan at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in Westbury, New York. (AP | PTI)
The last two ICC events – 2023 World Cup, 2024 T20 World Cup – show that the shoe is now on the other foot. It is Pakan that suffers from an inferiority complex. Now India has the confidence to turn any game. They didn’t let the pressure of winning overwhelm them in front of over a lakh spectators at the Narendra Modi Stadium and at New York’s Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, they performed a Houdini act in the final overs.
This sporting pattern isn’t quite unique to Pakan. Other teams too have been in this terrible place. But this isn’t a dead end. Back in the day, Manchester City was a no-hoper team in the English league when neighbours Man United ruled. Losses in big games and their frequent acts of ‘snatching defeat from jaws of victory’ would be received a familiar groan of ‘typical City’. It was a chronic disorder that was given a name – City-itis.
These days, ‘typical Pakan” is often heard on the international cricket circuit. This Sunday, they have a chance to cure Pakanitis. But India wouldn’t oblige. This is no war, no shooting, just an engrossing sporting contest where two proud cricketing nations play to preserve their legacy. This is a more civilised theme which has potential to revive sporting ties that the war-monger tribe has snapped.
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