This column is not about cricket. It’s about the behaviour of the Indian cricket team. More specifically, it’s about grace on the games field, etiquette and the decent and proper behaviour expected of sportsmen. And it’s prompted by the decision of our cricket team not to shake hands with their Pakistani opponents in Colombo last Sunday.
Frankly, that wasn’t cricket. Indeed, that phrase sums up the point I want to make.
Cricket, they say, is a gentleman’s game. It follows that there is a certain decorum that should be observed. Shaking hands with your opponents is part of the spirit of cricket. Not to do so flouts it.
There is an important point to remember about sport. The opposing side are not your adversaries. They are certainly not your enemies. They are merely opponents as keen to win the game as you are to defeat them. Shaking hands with your opponent exemplifies the spirit of sport. Shorn of that spirit, sport is reduced to just physical exercise. It loses its higher meaning.
The truth is that if political tensions are so severe that we cannot even shake hands with Pakistani cricketers then, logically, we shouldn’t have played Pakistan at all. But once we decided we would compete against them, our team let the country down by failing to shake hands.
The belief that they upheld the country’s honour by this rudeness is not just mistaken, it reflects a fragile and insecure nationalism.
India is strong enough and courageous enough to do the right thing even in difficult circumstances. Sadly, on Sunday, our cricket team was not.
I doubt if the world was impressed by our team’s behaviour. It doesn’t prove how strong and resilient our nation is. Instead, it suggests a lack of confidence in ourselves that we needed to snub the other side to prove our own valour.
This wasn’t the first display of such churlish and immature behaviour. It also happened in Dubai last September. But it contradicts the way our team has behaved in the past. In 1999, at the height of the Kargil war, the Indian team shook hands with Pakistan at the World Cup in England. In doing so, they were not forgetful of what Pakistan had done and they were not dishonouring the Indian soldiers who were, at that very moment, laying down their lives defending our threatened border. They were simply doing the right thing as sportsmen.
In addition, they acknowledged the fact that cricket is not war by other means. It’s a game with a code of conduct of its own and the honourable thing to do is to observe it.
Perhaps the most glorious moment for India-Pakistan cricket ties happened in January 1999 at the Chennai Test. Against expectations, Pakistan defeated India. When their players took a lap of honour in the stadium, the Indian audience gave them a standing ovation. It was a moment that showed the greatness of India to the world. That was a generosity of spirit, a large heartedness, that I was then, and will always be, proud of. It was India at its best. As the commentator Harsha Bhogle said on air “this is the best sight you will see anywhere in the world … if you ever wanted to see a victory for sport, here it is on your television screens, in your drawing rooms.” Pakistan, no doubt, won the match. India, however, carried the day.
That was, of course, before Kargil. But nine months later, when an Asia Eleven competed against the Rest of the World in Dhaka, Sachin Tendulkar, Ajay Jadeja, Anil Kumble and Sourav Ganguly played under the captaincy of Pakistan’s Wasim Akram and won the match. They didn’t hesitate to do so because they understood the spirit of cricket.
Sadly, on Sunday, our cricketers showed the world how brilliantly they play the game but how poorly they understand its spirit. They proved they were the better players and long may that be the case. Alas, they also suggested they are not gentlemen.
Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story. The views expressed are personal
