Pakistan plays cricket, we talk about it

Last Saturday, we played an ODI with Pakistan in South Africa and lost. We always take losing in cricket to heart, especially against Pakistan for reasons that have little to do with the sport. We consider Pakistan a cartographic catastrophe. That much is clear to us. From our perspective Pakistan is strange - and therefore ought to lose when playing with us.
Consider the facts. It is inhabited by a visibly hairy people. They are a famously undisciplined lot. The land is uniformly bombed from Waziristan to the Wagah border by the more active of the citizens themselves. It houses just about every fundamentalist outfit in the world. The country is riotously led by the Zardaris and the Musharrafs. The economy crawls on all fours and, often when it gets really tired it just lies down, totally immobile. Clearly, a failed nation. Yet we keep losing to them.
Last Saturday was not the first time, of course. According to one research source, out of the 118 ODIs India has played with Pakistan, our bearded brothers across the Chenab have won 69. India 45. The rest were drawn or washed out. Oh oh. Those are the figures. And listen to the noise we make. Experts put down last week's defeat to poor bowling and the absence of players like Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag. These are just excuses, as the statistics bear out. There have been dozens of matches where the bowlers did a good job and Yuvraj and Sehwag batted well and we still lost.
Not that it makes any difference. Lose or win, we talk. It is as if the moment we pause, some lone comic voice would shout out the truth. Whatever the reason, Indians love to talk cricket. The sport here really is an affliction of the tongue. We suffer from a collective condition of cricket-logorrhea .
The disorder is not without its merits. We have, for instance, created out of sheer babble, a whole ecology for cricket-related enterprise. After all BCCI is the richest cricket body in the world. Which also explains why an IPL star like MS Dhoni makes $5426 for each run scored. He is the richest player on the Forbes cricket player list, with Sachin Tendulkar following him closely. The other Indian players on the list are Yuvraj Singh, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly. Pakistani caps are altogether missing from the scene. They are busy punching the hell out of each other in the dressing room or praying, both done with equal intensity of conviction.
Yet the fact is that Pakistan is a better cricket playing nation than us. We make money out of it. Pakistan wins. Your correspondent once led his UKG team against a much berated and chronically strife-torn LKG Eleven, a match that unfortunately deteriorated after a couple of crucial catches into an Extreme Fighting Contest. Since then he has always viewed an LKG student with fear and apprehension. There is no telling what the brawny young man will do next, which is pretty much how India views Pakistan: a perspective of fear mixed with disdain.
Last Saturday, roughly around the same time as Pakistan was humbling India at Centurion, 27 people lost their lives in North Waziristan at the hands of two devout Taliban suicideaspirants . So far this year, over 2,000 people have got killed in such attacks.
The 10 per cent government of Asif Ali Zardari is battling with at least 13 groups of fundamentalists out on the streets, wrestling with the army in soundproof rooms, and Zardari himself must be going slowly mad in the privacy of his palace - and all because he got married to the wrong woman.
Yet, despite the chaos, when Pakistan plays against India out there in the middle, on an average they give their best and they are better than us. When the Indian players are asked to explain their far and few between triumphs, we can be sure of a detailed analysis. How it happened, the ice-cold calculations that went into the winning, the wind speed factor, the moist grass, the colour of the clouds, the surprise combinations.
If, on the other hand, the day belongs to Pakistan and the guy with the mike in his hand asks their skipper in a patronising voice how the seemingly unlikely triumph came about, he will begin eloquently, Inshah Allah! And he will end it right there. Silence ensues. The audience is waiting. The studio is waiting. The pundit's boss is waiting. The pundit makes weak, encouraging noises. The Pakistan captain looks up at the sky and rolls his eyes. On a good day, he may even point his finger over his head. That's about it. The fact is he doesn't know. Nor, bloody hell, do we.