Does an India-Pakistan match still invoke the same emotion?

Commenting on the hype around the recent handshakes between Indian and Pakistani cricketers on the sidelines of the Asia Cup 2022, one of my friends said, “What else are they supposed to do? It’s not a war.”

Well, I couldn’t agree more. Based on whatever little I have heard from former cricketers, despite face-offs on the ground, players across the Radcliffe Line have enjoyed a cordial relationship off the field. So, one wonders why this hoopla is around handshakes and smiling videos?

The answer probably lies in the desperate attempt by broadcasters to invoke emotions amongst cricket fans. Both Digital and Print Media are coming up with their innovative ways to market this bumper clash with interviews of past players and top five matches among others. Every time the neighbors face each other on a cricket field, an aura of war is created to get the cricket audience glued to their television sets.

In the past, the two teams have produced many classics on the cricket field, which is part of folklore on both sides of the border. But does an India-Pakistan match still hold the same place in the hearts of the fans? At least the Indian fans don’t seem to be as excited for an India-Pakistan match as they would have been a decade back.

Ask an average Indian fan to name a few Pakistani players and you will get blank faces in response. When I posed this question to the same friend of mine, his frank answer with a smile was, “I only know the players who got injured (he was referring to Mohammad Wasim and Shaheen Afridi additionally he would know Babar Azam).”

Mind you, this friend is someone who has been following cricket since childhood and would be able to name the exact Pakistan squad (probably along with their statistics) that played against India in the 1996 World Cup or in the 2003 World Cup. He could be extempored for hours on Amir Sohail’s dismissal by Venkatesh Prasad in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) and the Sachin Tendulkar six at Centurion.

But he is not alone, there are many like him. Most Indian cricket fans would currently at their best be able to name three or four in the Pakistan team.

So, it won’t be wrong to say that interest in these encounters has definitely gone down among Indian fans. I will leave the discussion on the reasons behind it for another day.

But has the meaning of this rivalry changed for the players as well? "For now, we all are very excited. As players and as an Indian cricket team, we always look forward to this India-Pakistan clash, we do not play against each other anywhere else, only in big tournaments. So, it is always exciting, and it is a great challenge for all of us to compete against a good team like Pakistan," stated KL Rahul during a recent press conference.

If what KL Rahul said was anything to go by then there would be no drop in emotion amongst the players. The intensity on the field would be the same as in any other India-Pakistan match.

As far as the Indian fans are concerned, they may not be as emotionally involved as they would have been in the past, but they would still be in their own shades of blue supporting the men in blue. A Virat Kohli boundary or a Bhuvneshwar Kumar outswinger will still get loud cheers across the length and breadth of the country.

For Indian fans, of course, there is also a small element of taking revenge for their loss in the 2021 T20 World Cup. As a cricket fan, one can only hope that the match lives up to the hype that is being fabricated.