Truthful Tuesday | India-Pakistan no longer an elite rivalry
There are good rivalries, there are great rivalries then there is the mother of all rivalries, India vs Pakistan - or at least this is what the common notion is. In today’s edition of Truthful Tuesday, we look at why India vs Pakistan is a thing of the past and why it’s not a great rivalry anymore.
There are few things more painful than seeing a sporting rivalry that you, as a kid, adored and were in awe of, die a slow, painful death. Not only does it remind you of the good ol’ days, but it leaves you wondering what went wrong. Rivalries in individual sports tend to die out with time, for the simple fact that there’s a time constraint attached to them, thus when it comes to the real, titanic, timeless rivalries, we tend to bank on team sports - the culture, the ethics and anecdotes are passed on from one generation to another and thus the significance of the contest remains unperturbed for centuries; the greatest rivalries in sport are the ones that have stood the test of time. For years, I was of the belief that India-Pakistan was one such great rivalry, but after deep retrospection, I've come to the realization and conclusion that all this while, we’ve been fooling and forcing ourselves to call it ‘great’, for it has been dead for over a decade.
The thought of India-Pakistan being a dead rivalry is something that has been going on inside my head for years, but it wasn’t until last week, when I was listening to the ‘Super Over’ podcast involving Jemimah Rodrigues, JP Duminy and Marnus Labuchagne, that I realized how much the rivalry had fallen from grace. The podcast had a segment where the three discussed and debated what they felt was the best rivalry in cricket as of the moment, and each of them made a case for a rivalry of their own country - Jemimah for India vs Pakistan, Labuschagne for the Ashes and Duminy for South Africa vs Australia. Obviously, the Ashes emerged as the undisputed winner, but it pained me to see that the only valid argument that could have been made to support India-Pakistan’s case was the history between the two nations and the ongoing political tension between the two countries off the field.
Over the course of the last 10 years, the rivalry has fallen so far behind its competitors in terms of the actual cricket that’s been played on the field that the only way of masking its shortcomings and making it sound relevant is raving about past, ‘once upon a time’ stories. Think about it: how many India-Pakistan encounters have we witnessed since the start of 2010, that, after the conclusion of the game, have given us a sense of satisfaction of having watched a good cricket match? When I say ‘good cricket match’, I’m not really referring to high standards of cricket. A hallmark of a great rivalry is not the quality on display; it’s rather the desire and intensity you see within the players - the Sunderland-Newcastle derby is a prime example of the same. 80% of the India-Pakistan matches that have been played since the turn of the last decade have been drab, lifeless encounters where the players have looked more disinterested than Mesut Ozil in a high-intensity game at the Anfield and yet, we’re being told over and over again on why it is still the ‘Mother of all Rivalries’.
Make no mistake, in no way am I accusing the players of not giving everything they have. What I’m suggesting is that the rivalry has organically died over the past 12 years and has come to the point where the players don’t feel the need to be pumped up for it anymore. And there might be a couple of major reasons why the rivalry has died a natural death - one, the undeniable powershift which has seen India go ten levels above Pakistan on all aspects and two, the unfortunate circumstances which have led these two sides facing each other no more than once per year.
But could these two points be really used as an excuse to justify the kind of matches these two sides have given the fans over the course of the past decade? To counter the first point, a rivalry like India vs Bangladesh has grown enormously over the past five years despite the two sides being on completely different sides of the spectrum in terms of quality. And to counter the second point, if a rivalry is so great, a longer gap between two matches, if anything, should spice up the contest even more - this is what we saw in the 2017 Australian Open final between Federer and Nadal, which was the duo’s first meeting in over a year. Unfortunately, in the case of India vs Pakistan, no matter how long the two teams go without playing each other, of late, the contests have ended up being soulless, boring and one-sided; almost serving as an insult to the great battles the two sides had in the 90s and the early 2000s.
But at the end of the day, there is only so much of external factors - be it the fans or media - can do in driving a rivalry forward. Eventually, it all comes down to the players and you wonder if the ‘professionalism’ of the current crop of players might have played a part in the drowning of the rivalry. As much as we hate to admit it, there is no better way of spicing up a cricket match than someone saying something stupid right before - or during - the match and maybe that’s what is needed to rejuvenate this rivalry.
We know for sure it’s not going to come from India’s part, for they will be more than happy beating Pakistan every other day, so maybe the next time these two sides meet each other, we need a few ‘gaalis’ being thrown at the Indians by the Pakistani bowlers. Or maybe an ‘unintentional’ shoulder barge. Something to spice up the contest, for otherwise, it’s going to be another snoozefest which will take the rivalry to rock bottom. Dare I say if the India-Pakistan rivalry were to be currently ranked based on the merit of the ‘entertainment’ factor, it would rank behind the Ashes, India-Australia, India-England, England-South Africa and many more rivalries.
Of course, when the next India-Pakistan encounter beckons, unsurprisingly, there will be hype and buzz surrounding the fixture. But let’s not get fooled by it, though - the only reason it's hyped anymore is for India to feel good about themselves and for Pakistan to stay relevant in the cricketing world.
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