On a humid Sunday night in Dubai, the roar of thousands packed into the stadium was supposed to celebrate a contest of bat and ball. India had just beaten Pakistan by five wickets in the Asia Cup final. Yet, instead of jubilant scenes of handshakes and a glittering trophy lifted high, viewers around the world saw something stranger. The Indian team refused to accept the winner’s trophy.
The reason? The trophy was to be presented by Mohsin Naqvi, Pakistan’s interior minister and chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), who also heads the Asian Cricket Council.
For India’s cricket board, taking the silverware from his hands was politically unacceptable.
“We have decided not to take the Asia Cup trophy from the ACC chairman, who happens to be one of the main leaders of Pakistan,” said Devajit Saikia, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
What might have been dismissed as a petty snub quickly spiraled into a diplomatic row.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated his players on social media with martial language: “#OperationSindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins!”
Naqvi shot back: “If war was your measure of pride, history already records your humiliating defeats at Pakistan’s hands. No cricket match can rewrite that truth.”
It was a reminder that cricket, once a lifeline of diplomacy between the nuclear-armed neighbors, has now become yet another frontline in their endless confrontation.
It wasn’t always like this. For decades, cricket offered India and Pakistan a way to talk when politics had stalled.
The idea of “cricket diplomacy” was first dramatized in February 1987, when Pakistan’s military ruler, President Gen Zia-ul-Haq, flew to Jaipur to watch a test match. At the time, both nations had mobilized troops along the border during a dangerous standoff.
Zia did not hold formal talks with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi but used his presence at the cricket ground to send a blunt message: if pushed, Pakistan could press the nuclear button. His brief airport conversation with Gandhi was enough to cool tensions, and within weeks both sides agreed to pull back troops.
Twelve years later, in 1999, just months after India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, cricket again offered a rare thaw. Pakistan’s team toured India, and when they won a tense match in Chennai, the crowd gave them a standing ovation. It was a moment of grace, showing how ordinary fans could applaud their rivals even in fraught times.
Between 2003 and 2008, cricket diplomacy reached its high noon.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s 2005 visit to India was as much about cricket as it was about diplomacy. He and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh began the day at Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, watching a one-day international. Musharraf, a passionate cricket fan, had insisted that both leaders should also attend the afternoon prize distribution ceremony.
While the official talks were taking place at Hyderabad House, cricket was never far from the president’s mind. At intervals, one of Musharraf’s aides would step out of the meeting room, enquire about the score and then pass a slip of paper to the president. The Indian side assumed these notes carried strategic instructions or updates meant to steer the negotiations.
As it turned out, the slips contained nothing more than the latest cricket score. India was losing wickets quickly, and Musharraf, eager to get back to the stadium, eventually broke the ice by joking to Singh: “Your team seems to be in a hurry. It does not want us to return to the stadium.”
The match ended before the leaders wrapped up their discussions. But Musharraf capped the day by hosting both teams at the Taj Palace Hotel, where Delhi’s political and social elite turned out for an evening that blended sport, diplomacy, and spectacle.
In 2011, Singh invited Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Mohali for a World Cup semifinal. The leaders sat side by side in the stands, signaling at least a willingness to talk after the trauma of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
These were not just photo-ops. Cricket matches created a public mood where diplomacy could breathe.
For Indians and Pakistanis, cricket is not just a sport. Both nations inherited the game from their colonial past, and it became entwined with national identity after Partition in 1947.
When Pakistan toured India in 1952 for its first test series, some players were men who had once played together for undivided India. In 1955, when India toured Pakistan, the Wagah border was thrown open.
Ten thousand Indian fans crossed into Lahore to watch the test, returning home each night. It was a symbolic reminder that the border was still porous, and people-to-people contact was possible.
The sport carried immense emotional weight. Unlike hockey, which remains the official national sport of both countries, cricket came to embody their rivalry before a global audience. Every India-Pakistan clash was billed as more than a game. Yet, precisely because of that, leaders occasionally found it useful to channel nationalist fervor into sport rather than war.
Sports have often been a proxy for politics around the world. The Romans used gladiatorial contests to distract citizens from the empire’s troubles. The so-called “Football War” of 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras flared after a disputed match.
For India and Pakistan, cricket served both roles: sometimes a release valve, sometimes a spark.
During the massive Indian military exercise Operation Brasstacks in 1986-87, war seemed imminent. Once again, a cricket match allowed Zia to parachute into India and send signals that de-escalated tensions. After the 1998 nuclear tests, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif approved a cricket tour to India that coincided with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s bus journey to Lahore. That visit produced the Lahore Declaration, a rare high point in bilateral relations.
But there were also dark moments. After the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1999, India canceled its tour of Pakistan. Following the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, cricket ties were again suspended. Pakistani players were barred from the lucrative Indian Premier League. At such times, cricket was weaponized as a diplomatic sanction.
Observers say the Dubai trophy snub shows the end of cricket diplomacy as we knew it. Under Modi, cricket has been deliberately folded into nationalist politics. India’s largest stadium is named after him. The International Cricket Council is headed by Jay Shah, son of Modi’s closest ally and Home Minister, Amit Shah.
In Pakistan, the cricket board chair doubles as interior minister, a reminder that cricket is not free from the shadow of the military establishment.
Sushant Singh, an Indian defense analyst, put it starkly: “Instead of building fraternal ties and people-to-people contact, the cricket field has now become the site of playing out nationalist fantasies.”
In this climate, every match becomes a proxy battlefield. The language of victory and defeat is openly martial. Fans on both sides are encouraged to see the game less as sport and more as a continuation of political conflict.
Cricket’s Unique Power
Why did cricket, more than any other sport, play this role?
Part of the answer lies in its structure. A test match lasts five days, with long pauses between moments of drama. That rhythm allows spectators to chat, interact, and even fraternize with rival fans.
Players at the boundary often converse with supporters, and opponents share smiles or jokes during lulls. Scholars such as David Levinson and Karen Christensen note that this creates opportunities for friendship-building unusual in other sports.
But now with focus on short formats one days and off late now 20 over cricket, this unique selling position of the game is also gone.
In normal days its appeal used to cut across religion, language, and class. In both countries, cricket heroes—from Imran Khan to Sachin Tendulkar—transcended narrow identities to become symbols of national pride.
This made cricket uniquely suited as a diplomatic tool. Leaders could signal warmth by attending a match without committing to formal negotiations. The symbolism resonated widely.
Yet cricket diplomacy was never a steady path. It was used when convenient, dropped when not. India often treated cricket as a lever—canceling tours when it wanted to signal displeasure, resuming them when it suited broader strategy. Pakistan, by contrast, sometimes used cricket to force interaction at moments of high tension.
This inconsistency is why cricket diplomacy, despite its memorable images, rarely produced lasting breakthroughs. At best, it created temporary atmospherics. At worst, it became another arena of manipulation.
The Dubai incident suggests that cricket diplomacy may have reached its endgame. What was once a bridge is now a wall. The symbolism of refusing even to touch a trophy because it is handed over by a Pakistani official reveals how hardened positions have become.
This shift mirrors the broader trajectory of India-Pakistan ties. Both countries are more nationalistic, less inclined to seek common ground. To add to misery, the media has turned more jingoistic. Cricket, once a shared passion that offered a glimmer of unity, has been subsumed into the rivalry.
And yet, memories linger of those moments when cricket softened hearts. The standing ovation for Pakistan in Chennai, Musharraf and Singh watching a match together, Gilani and Singh in Mohali. These images remind us that sport still holds the potential to humanize adversaries.
Whether future leaders will have the imagination—or the courage—to revive that tradition remains uncertain. For now, cricket has been bowled over by politics.
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