India were in a familiar situation at the Asian Games. Victory was taken for granted, defeat would have counted as a disgrace. This is the fate of top-ranked teams: damned if you do and doubly damned if you don’t.

The repercussions would have been greater had India lost to Japan following the infamous ‘wide ball’ in the last over by Axar Patel. The right decision was made, but it needed a show of dissent by the players to get there.

That an international tournament was played without DRS (and even, as it turned out, without proper pitches) is stunning. Forget the complaints about accommodation and transport, the fact that cricket had been reduced to a ritual doesn’t speak well of the International Cricket Council which should insist on minimum standards at multi-event games. One hopes the ICC (or its representative) will do better at the Olympic Games two years from now in Los Angeles where the teams and competition will be of a higher standard.

The final had one message for cricket fans: Know the ‘passport names’ of your heroes. Thus we learnt — thanks to the amateurish television coverage — that Sanju Samson was actually Sanju Viswanath in disguise, and that the man we have been admiring as Tilak Varma is in reality Tilak Namboori. Skipper Shreyas Santosh is rumoured to have been amused by it all.

It was a great match for nostalgia buffs. Often we missed the first ball of an over or the last, and had to sit through inane advertisements to find out if a batter had been dismissed and if so how so? We were back in the 1980s, with the Justice Lodha Commission recommendations (“advertisement should be telecast to the extent of drinks and break session and unnecessary advertisement after every over and fall of wicket should be avoided”) decades into the future.

Target audience?

It does raise a fundamental question: for whom is cricket played? The players, who have a personal stake in doing well, and who, presumably love what they are doing and can do things the rest of us can only fantasise about? The spectators, who buy into the tribal and cultural ethos without being conscious of these? The administrators, who enjoy the power and the positive impact on their business interests? Television moguls whose scorecard doesn’t have bowling or batting figures but dollar and cent signs? Columnists, who find the negatives in a positive and vice versa? Perhaps it is all of the above, some of the above or none of the above.

What Joyce Carol Oates said about boxing applies equally to cricket (or any sport at the highest level). Speaking of the three Ali-Frazier fights, she said these were “boxing’s analogues to King Lear – ordeals of unfathomable human courage and resilience raised to the level of classical tragedy.”

Still, India may have scored more runs and claimed more wickets in the tournament than viewers actually saw live, which takes us into the realm of philosophy. Does it count as a six or a wicket when no one saw it? TV can make philosophers of us all.

The Asian Games gives breath once again to the argument against having cricket in multi-event games like the Olympics. An Olympic medal will mean less to a player than winning a World Cup or World Test Championship. And if the games are in a country with little or no interest in cricket, it is unlikely to spread its message which is what the ICC hopes for. From the International Olympic Committee’s point of view, it will draw in the south Asian population, or more specifically, the television viewership (this will also call for more professional handling from TV).

Perhaps an age limit like in Olympic football (under-23) can be applied to cricket too. The argument is similar: a world cup exists already and a team would prefer to win that over an Olympic medal.

If the Asian Games cricket, which has asked more questions than provided answers, succeeds in raising the right questions ahead of the Olympic Games, then the telecast would be a minor crib. The ICC will have to find the balance between spreading the game and keeping the television viewership satisfied without diminishing the quality.

Indian corporates, which already own teams in T20 franchise leagues of South Africa, UAE, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, West Indies, and USA as well as The Hundred in England appear hesitant to get into Australia and the Big Bash League which has decided to sell stakes in their teams too. This might just be a strategic reluctance in order to drive the prices down.

Cricket Australia is hoping that privatisation will bring in a billion dollars, a nice round figure but one which might remain a pipe dream if Indian corporates show no interest.

Gradually, inexorably, cricket, which is already in the command of the Indian cricket board might be moving beyond official administrative control of such elected bodies to become a plaything of billionaires with huge cash reserves and egos to match. The current Indian monopoly other cricket boards complain about will be nothing compared to the corporate oligarchy that might follow.

“Owners in the 21st century are destroying what took more than a hundred years to build,” wrote Dave Zirin of US sport a decade ago. The subtitle of his book Bad Sports is: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love. It can be read as a cautionary tale.

ICC committee

The International Cricket Council has formed a committee to assess the growing power of the franchises, with Bangladesh’s Tamim Iqbal as chairman. It is looking to align franchise leagues with the Future Tours Programme and planning a World Club T20 tournament.

And what will the ICC do if the committee decides that monopoly is not good for the game, as indeed it isn’t? Giving in to India’s demands was in the DNA of the sport’s governing body long before the current Chairman Jay Shah took over. Will the ICC create sensible rules to prevent too much power resting in the hands of too few?

For Indian corporates, Australia is the final frontier. Last year they boosted English cricket by half a billion pounds by investing in The Hundred.

There are 16 leagues around the world. There were 87 teams in this year’s T20 World Cup cycle. And cricket (T20) returns to the Olympics at Los Angeles in 2028. The game appears to be thriving, which accounts for the huge corporate interest. Cricket boards around the world for all their faults have a default job description — develop the game at the grassroots, retain its character and distinctiveness through the red ball game, spread it across the world, and ensure a clear-cut path from the schools to the international level. There is corruption (and not just financial), th—re is political interference, sometimes even outright laziness, but the game has prospered.

Corporates don’t have confusing goals. Theirs is a single-point programme involving just the bottom line, or return on investment. In recent decades cricket has become huge business, but to hand over the game to businessmen might not be in its best interests.

Monopoly is unhealthy in business or sport or in the business of sport. It ruins competition, encourages manipulation of rules and results, ignores what is important for the sport if it doesn’t add to the profits.

Relaxing the rules

How long before the Board of Control for Cricket in India eases its rule of not allowing active Indian players to play in other leagues? Reliance (Mumbai Indians) and GMR (Delhi Capitals) own or have stakes in four other franchises, in England, South Africa, UAE and the US. Players cannot serve two masters, and it is possible that club contracts might come into conflict with those with the board.

Possibilities abound. Players might be forced to choose. Franchise cricket, or T20 itself might be governed by a body which has little to do with the ICC. Compromises might affect the FTP and Test cricket. Forget the rampant six-hitting or struggling bowlers, T20 has bigger problems off the field.

The Big Three — India, England, Australia — are also the teams keenest on Test cricket, but for how long? The domestic franchises belong to the cricket boards, only the teams have different owners. True. You could also argue that franchise cricket will keep Test cricket alive, and that’s a good argument.

But it assumes a level of enlightenment in those controlling the game that might not always be available.

The BCCI has made a significant change to the playing conditions ahead of the 2026-27 domestic season, and now the bowler will be suspended for the remainder of the match for bowling deliberate front foot no balls or non-landing deliveries.

As per the existing rules, the bowler would have been suspended just for that particular innings for such deliveries.

The BCCI has circulated the changes, mooted by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) recently, among all the state associations.

“Bowler suspended for deliberate front foot no ball cannot bowl in the whole match. But the change to the playing conditions (41.8), will be decided by the on-field umpires,” the BCCI said in the circular, accessed by PTI.

Another significant rule change pertains to the day’s closure, and now, the last over will have to be completed even if a wicket falls in that over.

At present, stumps will be drawn if a wicket falls in the middle of the last over of the day.

But the MCC and BCCI thereby felt that Rule 12.5.2 needed to be amended as it “prevented teams from sending a new batter out late in the day.” Similarly, the teams henceforth will not be permitted to declare or forfeit (Rule 15.2) the final innings of the match, as the governing bodies thought “it was used for contrived results and bad for the game.” Now, the head coach of a team will be allowed to enter the field during drinks breaks during domestic one-day matches, as the ICC has also proposed a rule change in this regard in international cricket.

The wicketkeepers also got some breather in the proposed changes as their gloves need to be behind the stumps (Rule 27.3) only at the time of the delivery.

Earlier, the keepers had to ensure that their gloves remained behind the wicket once the bowler started his/her run-up.

On a few instances earlier, the law led to the ball being called a no-ball or stumping gets nullified.

The state associations have started informing umpires and match referees about the new rule changes ahead of the domestic season, starting next month with the Duleep Trophy.

“There will be some awareness programmes for officials, besides making the relevant parts of the circular available to them. We have good enough time to do all this as domestic season is almost a month away,” an official told PTI.

Twenty-four days after launching its Men’s T20 World Cup title defence with a scratchy win over the United States, Suryakumar Yadav’s men returned to the Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday night — this time with a semifinal against England looming large.

As the Indian squad went through its fielding drills under lights, the curators quietly covered the 22-yard strip that will dictate fortunes on Thursday. Two days out, the surface wore a greener look than is customary at the Wankhede — even by First-Class standards, let alone a T20 International.

With temperatures climbing steadily over the past fortnight, the decision to retain a healthy grass cover was understandable, a protective measure to prevent the pitch from drying out and breaking up. The pertinent question now is how much of that grass will be shaved off before match time.

Interestingly, while head coach Gautam Gambhir took a close look at the strip before it was covered, none of the Indian players ambled across to inspect it. Perhaps they are content to wait until match day, drawing cues from the two fixtures already played on this surface earlier in the tournament.

The red-soiled surface slated for Thursday’s semifinal was used for England’s clash against West Indies on February 11 and the Italy-Nepal game the following day. On both occasions, it offered assistance to spinners, particularly as the games progressed. Yet, much has changed since then — not least the weather and the stakes.

India’s preference for truer, flatter decks has been indulged through the Super Eights. Whether that pattern continues at the semifinal stage remains to be seen. For now, beneath the covers and the coastal humidity, the Wankhede strip holds its secrets close — waiting to reveal them on the biggest night of India’s campaign.

While India and Bangladesh wait to see who will blink first, the International Cricket Council has made it clear that there is no security threat in India. This is Bangladesh’s reason for not wishing to come to India for their World T20 matches commencing next month. It has weakened the former’s case while strengthening the latter’s resolve.

Bangladesh’s hasty announcement followed India’s hasty announcement to drop their bowler Mustafizur Rahman from the IPL after he had been picked in the auction. Storms have a way of spreading beyond the teacups where they originate. As the larger country with greater resources and a higher ranking, India might have been expected to act with better understanding and tolerance. But the Board of Control for Cricket in India allowed itself to be bullied by the government into dropping Mustafizur.

The player had nothing to do with the violence in Bangladesh which claimed Hindu lives. Nor should India’s foreign policy be decided by trolls on social media — it was a message here that set the ball rolling. But such niceties tend to be ignored in the ‘mine-is-bigger-than-yours’ type of street fight. National pride is often so brittle.

Bangladesh fans have been allegedly manhandled in India in recent years — in Kanpur at a Test and in Pune during the World Cup. The stories kept changing, however. The potential for crowd trouble exists anywhere in the world. Playing in southern India reduces that possibility, but the ICC has to make that call.

Brinkmanship

Brinkmanship comes easily to governments and sports bodies (sometimes they are the same). It doesn’t take a professional logician to work out that the side which has more to lose will ultimately give in. Bangladesh are ranked tenth in the world while India are No.1, so the arithmetic is not difficult. Still, there might be political mileage to be gained from standing up to the bigger country. Confronting the weaker in similar style does not carry the same traction.

Former Bangladesh skipper Tamim Iqbal’s has been a rare voice of reason in all this. He has urged his cricket board to avoid being driven by “public emotion” while deciding, and to be aware that a wrong decision could have an “impact 10 years down the line”.

Bangladesh can point to the fact that every time India refused to play an ICC tournament in Pakistan, they were allowed to play their matches in either the UAE or Sri Lanka. But that will not do them much good. To equate sporting responses with national pride (India have done this too, but they are confident of getting away with it) is both silly and dangerous. And if politicians — in this case the advisor to Bangladesh’s sports ministry — take a hard stance, they do their country’s sport much harm.

The situation should never have been allowed to get this far. The BCCI, its arm twisted by the government, should not have in turn twisted the arm of Kolkata Knight Riders and Shah Rukh Khan into dropping Mustafizur.

Wrong strategy

If Bangladesh had a genuine issue with security, a quiet word with the BCCI and the ICC might led to a shift in the venues of their matches. Such diplomacy should be conducted behind closed doors and not in the full glare of publicity for two reasons. One, it tends to raise the temperature till the issue becomes unbearably hot. Two, when the decision goes against one side, it makes them look ridiculous. A series of wrongs do not make a right.

The World T20 commences on February 7, so common sense and decency might still win the day. The ICC being neither a proactive body nor one that reacts quickly to developing situations, has been kowtowing to the BCCI for so long that most do not see these as separate entities. If the BCCI keeps quiet, it will be up to the Bangladesh Cricket Board to ignore the perceived insult, forget national pride and change its mind. There will be talk of cricket winning, of India’s kindness and Bangladesh’s ability to see the bigger picture.

Whatever happens can be spun to favour one or both of the countries or indeed the ICC. After all, finding scapegoats is a pastime for the apparently slighted.

For so long has the Board of Control for Cricket in India been the bully of international cricket, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it is equally the bully of domestic cricket too. By asking the Kolkata Knight Riders to sack Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman after he had been picked for the IPL, the BCCI showed it was more concerned with pleasing its masters in the government than the sport it was elected to protect and preserve.

Seven players from Bangladesh were in the auction, one was picked. Then came the troll. It was a delicious opportunity for a politician to strike at Bangladesh (ahead of the elections in Bengal) and a prominent Muslim at home in the same action. He was like a batter who edges for runs and then sees an overthrow add another four to his score.

Shah Rukh Khan is the face of KKR, so by the logic of the troll he becomes a traitor for choosing a player from Bangladesh, a troubled country where a Hindu man was killed in ongoing violence.

How Bangladesh treat their minorities seems to have come as a shock to the politician who knows all about treating minorities at home.

Bangladesh in response have asked the International Cricket Council to move their matches in next month’s T20 World Cup away from India while deciding the IPL will not be telecast in their country. Mustafizur, Shah Rukh Khan, private franchises, the game of cricket itself have become collateral damage in a game of political expediency.

India provided asylum for deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina while the funeral of another Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, was attended by the external affairs minister. The troll seems to have missed these events.

In a fix

The BCCI’s action — it is an arm of the ruling party after all — has put Indian sport in a fix. This is the country that hopes to host the 2036 Olympics. By then how many countries might upset the authorities and how loud will the calls be for banning these for perceived slights? Shah Rukh Khan will be 70 then.

This is not to say that sport and politics do not mix. That would be naive. Boycotts on moral grounds (apartheid in South Africa) have shown that when nations stand together, change can happen.

But this Bangladesh issue has not been thought through at a time when India are trying to mend fences with their neighbours. Depending on which side of the political divide you are, this is either a victory for India’s foreign policy, or yet another neighbourhood disaster.

Not for the first time, cricket has to bear the burden of political posturing. This means either that sport is not important, and therefore can be a substitute for low-grade politics, or it is so important that only cricket can carry the intended message, whatever that is. But sport does not reshape the world, it merely reflects it.

And what it is reflecting now is not pretty. The weaponisation of sport or entertainment or justice or religion or any sphere of human activity never is. Bullying is usually a sign of insecurity.

When things go wrong, cricket is blamed for failing where it was never equipped to succeed. It is forced to wear the cloak of failure that politicians shed with alacrity. Cricket has carried more weight than it asked for because it can be a shared language.

The ICC, an arm of the BCCI and by extension the Indian government, is probably awaiting instructions. In the past, it was India who championed the entry of their neighbours Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh into international cricket. For long Afghanistan used India as ‘home’ ground because of the situation there. We can call none of these countries our friends now. Cricket diplomacy cuts both ways — it strengthens ties (its expected role) as easily as it divides nations when handled negatively.

The whole affair exposes the dangers of politicians running sports. And of foreign policy based on social media posts. When the ‘might is right’ approach — Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! — is the prevailing orthodoxy, it will take time to appreciate that actually doing right constitutes might. That strength flows from fairness.

For so long has the Board of Control for Cricket in India been the bully of international cricket, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it is equally the bully of domestic cricket too. By asking the Kolkata Knight Riders to sack Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman after he had been picked for the IPL, the BCCI showed it was more concerned with pleasing its masters in the government than the sport it was elected to protect and preserve.

Seven players from Bangladesh were in the auction, one was picked. Then came the troll. It was a delicious opportunity for a politician to strike at Bangladesh (ahead of the elections in Bengal) and a prominent Muslim at home in the same action. He was like a batter who edges for runs and then sees an overthrow add another four to his score.

Shah Rukh Khan is the face of KKR, so by the logic of the troll he becomes a traitor for choosing a player from Bangladesh, a troubled country where a Hindu man was killed in ongoing violence.

How Bangladesh treat their minorities seems to have come as a shock to the politician who knows all about treating minorities at home.

Bangladesh in response have asked the International Cricket Council to move their matches in next month’s T20 World Cup away from India while deciding the IPL will not be telecast in their country. Mustafizur, Shah Rukh Khan, private franchises, the game of cricket itself have become collateral damage in a game of political expediency.

India provided asylum for deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina while the funeral of another Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, was attended by the external affairs minister. The troll seems to have missed these events.

In a fix

The BCCI’s action — it is an arm of the ruling party after all — has put Indian sport in a fix. This is the country that hopes to host the 2036 Olympics. By then how many countries might upset the authorities and how loud will the calls be for banning these for perceived slights? Shah Rukh Khan will be 70 then.

This is not to say that sport and politics do not mix. That would be naive. Boycotts on moral grounds (apartheid in South Africa) have shown that when nations stand together, change can happen.

But this Bangladesh issue has not been thought through at a time when India are trying to mend fences with their neighbours. Depending on which side of the political divide you are, this is either a victory for India’s foreign policy, or yet another neighbourhood disaster.

Not for the first time, cricket has to bear the burden of political posturing. This means either that sport is not important, and therefore can be a substitute for low-grade politics, or it is so important that only cricket can carry the intended message, whatever that is. But sport does not reshape the world, it merely reflects it.

And what it is reflecting now is not pretty. The weaponisation of sport or entertainment or justice or religion or any sphere of human activity never is. Bullying is usually a sign of insecurity.

When things go wrong, cricket is blamed for failing where it was never equipped to succeed. It is forced to wear the cloak of failure that politicians shed with alacrity. Cricket has carried more weight than it asked for because it can be a shared language.

The ICC, an arm of the BCCI and by extension the Indian government, is probably awaiting instructions. In the past, it was India who championed the entry of their neighbours Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh into international cricket. For long Afghanistan used India as ‘home’ ground because of the situation there. We can call none of these countries our friends now. Cricket diplomacy cuts both ways — it strengthens ties (its expected role) as easily as it divides nations when handled negatively.

The whole affair exposes the dangers of politicians running sports. And of foreign policy based on social media posts. When the ‘might is right’ approach — Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! — is the prevailing orthodoxy, it will take time to appreciate that actually doing right constitutes might. That strength flows from fairness.

How many agencies does it take to destroy Test cricket? If the current Ashes series is indication, it would involve the local administrators, the International Cricket Council, and the players themselves. Not since the 19th century have two Tests in a series ended within two days. The track for the first Test in Perth was adjudged “very good” by the ICC while Melbourne’s was declared “unsatisfactory.”

Home wins have, in the points system of the World Test Championship — points as a percentage of the total available — become so important that wickets are prepared unabashedly for home bowlers. Still, Australia took a 3-0 lead within 11 days without their best attack of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon all playing together.

England won in Melbourne, but something important was missed. The wicket improved as the match progressed; however, neither team had the batters with the defence to take the match into the fourth or fifth day. The exception, England’s Joe Root, slightly off balance followed the ball and edged in the first innings, while in the second the DRS left it to the ‘umpire’s call’ for leg before.

That England made the highest total of the match to win suggested it wasn’t the 10mm grass on the wicket that was solely responsible for the result. Melbourne had more grass on it for the 2021-22 Ashes Test (11mm), as well as the New Zealand Test of 2019-20 (12mm). Those matches took three and four days respectively.

The 90,000-plus fans in the stadium seemed less inclined to blame the pitch, cheering wildly when opener Ben Duckett played forward defence in the midst of a sword-fight of an innings as England approached a win. At least some of them might have craved a defensive shot with the same keenness with which others screamed for a six.

Not an easy task

The pitch could not have been easy; but Test cricket was never meant to be easy. It is a test as much of technique and temperament as of spirit and the passion to stick it out. In a sense, the batters were playing for Test cricket itself besides their respective teams. Two-day Tests are nearly as ridiculous as two-Test series, although teams often prefer the latter thanks to the points system.

Flaws in the WTC system — and the Ashes has highlighted them — have been pointed out before. ‘Context’, that magic word, cannot be the excuse for teams not playing every other or indeed the same number of matches. Two fundamental changes suggest themselves.

One, split the 12 Test-playing teams into two divisions with the odd-ranked teams in one and the even-ranked in the other. This will eliminate the need for promotions and demotions or one strong group carrying the weak group. The god of telecasts will be propitiated too. If the two-Test series goes, it might be worth considering a three-year cycle rather than the current two.

Compromises with franchise cricket will have to be made. Recently South Africa’s Tabraiz Shamsi took his cricket board to court for denying a No Objection Certificate to play a T20 league abroad. He won the case, to give other boards something to think about.

The CEO of Cricket Australia who was suggesting recently that only Australia, India and England should play Test cricket is now talking about balancing “commercial imperatives and performance” after the Melbourne Test. Losing ten million dollars over a two-day Test can do that to an administrator.

More pertinently, Aussie great Greg Chappell wrote in ESPNcricinfo, “Two Tests failed to reach day three not due to superior skill but a glaring absence of desire. Batters slashed wildly, abandoning technique for bravado, as if playing their ‘natural game’ excused capitulation. They let down predecessors who bled for this rivalry; they shortchanged fans who braved the holiday heat; they betrayed their own generation by forsaking cricket’s core tenets – playing each ball on merit, scrapping for every run, enduring bruises for the greater good. I cannot believe any player left the field thinking they had given their all over those paltry sessions.”

In a match where the highest score was 46, nearly every dismissal diminished the game. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for Test cricket.

In his much-quoted essay The Sporting Spirit, George Orwell wrote, “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard for rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting.” Over the years, an India-Pakistan cricket match has been characterised as war minus the shooting, but seldom by the players, and rarely manifested on the field of play.

When cricket relations resumed after 17 years and India toured Pakistan in 1978, the teams were led by Bishan Bedi and Mushtaq Mohammed, two contemporary greats who played together for Northamptonshire in England. They were firm friends. Yet even in that atmosphere, Cambridge-educated Majid Khan was quoted as saying, “Pakistan is ready for a 1,000-year war with India”. Those days there was no PR machinery that rushed to the aid of players to translate their plain English into palatable prose. No one attempted to interpret that to explain Majid meant “cricket war”, since sports contests were seen as proxies for war.

Warm hospitality

Over the years, journalists from either country have returned to their own with stories of the warm reception they received and the generosity of their hosts. On the 1989-90 tour of Pakistan, when I expressed a desire to visit Mohenjo-daro, I was flown there as a guest, provided with a guide, and taken around. Perhaps the guide was a security person to ensure I didn’t do anything his bosses wouldn’t approve of. No matter, since my interest was historical, not political. On most tours, writers came back with stories of stores refusing to accept money if they bought anything.

It wasn’t all sweetness and light, of course. In Faisalabad on that 1989-90 tour, there were megaphone-wielding speakers urging the public to come to the stadium and disrupt the matches. In Karachi, a one-dayer had to be called off owing to crowd disturbances.

But the sound and fury was orchestrated mainly by those around the matches rather than the players themselves, who were, and continue to be, friends.

And this is where the texture of this Asia Cup has been different. For one, the stadium hasn’t been packed as usual, and it is the players (goaded by their administration) who have taken the lead in keeping the hostility alive, justified or not. The refusal to shake hands or to be seen fraternising with the opposition out of respect for those who fell in Pahalgam and in support of India’s soldiers means that cricket has been forced to behave out of character because politicians don’t want to make the tough decisions. This is in contrast to times when cricket was forced to play the role of peace missions and diplomacy. Cricket for Peace was the motto then.

Politics minus the war

At the Asia Cup, we are witnessing politics minus the war. Perhaps this is better than war thanks to politics. A Sahibzada Farhan pointing his bat like a gun in celebration of a half-century is a better alternative to actual guns pointed at anyone. Mock battles on the cricket field — however ugly they look and however unnecessary — are better than real action on the battlefield where lives, rather than cricket matches are lost.

The Indian team has shown greater maturity (apart from greater skill) by limiting their response to the kind of off-field sledging skipper Suryakumar Yadav indulged in when he said, “Stop calling India-Pakistan matches a rivalry…it’s a no-contest.” He must hope his words don’t come back to bite him at the end of the tournament.

If Pakistan make it to the final, and play India, the temptation to go one-up on the other might be strong. If the response to a handshake not given is a bat pointed like a gun or miming a plane being shot down (this, by Haris Rauf), will the Indian team be practising their mimes to make a point? The notion that sport stands for something beyond itself implies something positive — hope, peace, love — rather than the opposite. It is after all we who paint it in the colours we want.

Someday, an India-Pakistan cricket match will be a boring affair, with nothing memorable on field or off. Just another match, as players sometimes say. But when?