Cricket mismatch: India-Pakistan rivalry is dying out

A one-horse race — that’s what India-Pakistan cricket matches have sadly become in recent years. The Colombo encounter was no exception; there was an air of inevitability about India’s big victory. The gulf between the two teams is widening with every match, setting the alarm bells ringing for the much-touted “greatest rivalry”. Perhaps the only way Pakistan could have avoided defeat was to have boycotted the match — and that almost happened before the International Cricket Council made a desperate intervention and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif did a tactical U-turn. However, the anticlimax on the field is a stark reminder that this cash cow has virtually been milked dry. And that’s bad news for cricket as well as commerce.

It’s distressing to watch Pakistan, which was once a cricketing powerhouse, plumbing new depths. Stalwarts like Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Ramiz Raja, who were members of teams that won many matches against India in the 1980s and 1990s, have lashed out at the players and administrators. Their lament is that the current team is not even putting up a fight against the traditional rivals, and practically nothing is being done to avoid recurring embarrassment. The reluctance to involve former Pakistani players in the rebuilding process shows that self-serving politicians are calling the shots — without any accountability. For the record, Pakistan has won only two global titles — the 2009 T20 World Cup and the 2017 ODI Champions Trophy — since the dawn of this century.

The irony is not lost on anyone: ex-PM Imran Khan, arguably Pakistan’s greatest cricketer, is languishing in jail. The Sharif government’s focus is on political one-upmanship rather than on making sincere efforts to revitalise the nation’s most popular sport. Ruthless introspection is a must to address the shortcomings. If things are allowed to drift, Pakistan might become a nonentity in world cricket sooner or later.