India-Pak cricket, no longer allowed its innocence

We are mirrors of the worlds we inhabit; the person you become reflects the environment you're exposed to."There are days when cricket becomes more than a game — when its details are embroidered with meaning far heavier than bat on ball or numbers on a scoreboard. Sunday was one such day. It was not merely that runs were made or wickets were taken. That, of course, happened. But what has stayed in memory — what was replayed through the midnight hours on screens and in conversation — were two gestures, each no longer than a heartbeat, yet heavy with resonance.Farhan, having fought his way to a half-century, turned toward the stands and mimicked gunfire into the air. A few overs later, Rauf, in triumph over his six wickets, marked the figures with his fingers and ended the pantomime with the downward trace of a falling aircraft.For the record book, they will remain a 50 and six for nothing. For the living memory of the match, they will remain something else: symbols, provocations, theatre on a field already overburdened with history.There is a different quality to silence in an India-Pakistan match. It is not the hush of a county ground in May, nor the polite murmur of Lord's in midsummer. Here, silence is tense, alive, expectant — the pause of a crowd that carries with it the weight of decades. And the sound, when it comes, is not merely cheer but roar: a collective cry that feels older than the contest itself.In such a theatre, every gesture is magnified. A leap of joy in Melbourne, a cartwheel in Bridgetown, a shimmy in Kingston — these are accepted as flourishes of personality. Here, gestures become messages. A bat raised is innocent arithmetic; a mimed gun or plane crash cannot escape the weight of symbolism.The tragedy is that cricket does not need such ornament. It has its own grandeur: the lean beauty of a straight drive, the sudden rattle of stumps disturbed, the tactical chess that unfolds with every field change. Last night's match contained all of this. Runs were scored under pressure, bowlers struck at turning points, the contest was alive until the last. Yet all of it lies today in the shadows of two brief acts of theatre.Why do players do this? The answer lies not in the game itself but in the air around it. Sport, though it pretends at isolation, is never free from the culture that nurtures it.Players grow up in environments where confrontation is cheered, where rhetoric of victory and humiliation fills the air, where bravado is currency.A boy does not invent the gesture of firing a gun. He has seen it, somewhere, applauded. He has heard it, perhaps, in chants or slogans. When he carries it into his celebration, he is not creating anew; he is reflecting. Likewise, the downward arc of a crashing plane is not conjured in solitude.It is borrowed from a world beyond the rope — a world where tragedy is too often reduced to metaphor, where symbols of destruction are brandished as tools of one-upmanship.Players are not the authors here. They are mirrors. And mirrors are faithful.There was a time when this rivalry was spoken of in terms of pure cricket: the artistry of Zaheer Abbas against the precision of Bedi, the menace of Imran Khan against the courage of Gavaskar. Then, as now, politics seeped in, but the memory that endured was of contests fought with skill and dignity.In recent years, though, the theatre has grown louder than the cricket. Gestures, taunts and political readings dominate the conversation. The field, which ought to be a sanctuary of play, has become hostage to larger narratives. A wicket is not merely a wicket; it is seen as vindication. A six is not merely six runs; it is imagined as declaration.This captivity diminishes the game. Cricket's own theatre — its pauses, its sudden bursts of drama, its ebb and flow — is grand enough. It does not need the mimicry of weaponry or the pantomime of disaster. And yet, until the world around it changes, the game will continue to carry these shadows.It would be unjust to say this mirror reflects only hostility. There have been moments of grace, too — fielder helping a rival stretch a cramping leg, a captain applauding an opponent's hundred, crowds rising to salute visiting players. These are also reflections of culture: reminders that beneath the politics there exists a shared reverence for the game, a recognition of artistry, a memory of common soil.But those quieter images rarely find the spotlight. Confrontation is louder, easier to amplify, more satisfying for those who feed on rivalry. So it is the mimed gun and the crashing plane that are replayed endlessly, while the subtler gestures of respect are allowed to fade.One imagines, years from now, someone leafing through the statistical record. They will see Farhan's 50, Rauf's six for nothing. They will see the totals, the overs, the result. Nowhere will they find a note of the gestures that overshadowed the evening. And yet, for those who were there, or who watched, the memory will remain. The match will not be recalled for its cricketing balance, but for its symbols.Thus do statistics fail us. They are true, but incomplete. They can tell us who scored and who fell, but not why the crowd roared or why the air hung heavy. For that, one must remember the gestures, and the meaning they carried.The mirror is a stubborn thing. It shows what stands before it, without distortion. If the world around the field prizes bravado, the field will reflect bravado. If it applauds confrontation, the players will echo confrontation.The change must come first outside the boundary. Only then will the mirror show a different face. This is the uncomfortable truth for those who love cricket in its purity. We may long for contests defined by runs and wickets alone, for games remembered for artistry rather than theatre. But cricket here is not allowed that innocence. It reflects its world too faithfully.And so, on Sunday night, in a ground heavy with expectation, amid the glow of floodlights and the restless roar of the crowd, cricket again became more than cricket. It became a mirror. And what it showed was not grace, nor rivalry in its best form, but provocation. It showed a culture in which symbols of violence are carried easily, in which gestures are heavier than cover drives.Shishir Hattangadi is former Captain, Mumbai cricket team.

India-Pak cricket, no longer allowed its innocence

Shishir Hattangadi

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