India vs Pakistan: When hate didn't get a complimentary match pass

No handshakes at the toss between captains, but for India-Pakistan greats, fans at Premadasa, it was just cricket.
COLOMBO: The Indo-Pak relations on the field, in front of cameras, stayed where it had to stay. No handshakes.

In Colombo on Sunday, there wasn't the animosity that led up to the Asia Cup final last September. No one was taking pot-shots at each other, and television analysts from India were interviewing Pakistani players. But once it came to the toss, Salman Ali Agha and Surya Kumar Yadav handcuffed themselves from doing the most natural thing that they did all their lives - shaking hands with the opposition captain.




Agha said on Saturday that he wants cricket to be played in the spirit that it always was. Surya didn't rule out the handshake either, but the ice couldn't melt.

But if you kept an eye on the proceedings before the game, you could see that people around the sport were ready to move on from the off-field animosities that made the cricket world toxic.

Usman Tariq, the slinger mystery spinner of Pakistan, was doing warm-ups, and Harbhajan Singh, one of the staunchest critics of his action, was standing close by. Tariq didn't care for whatever was said in the lead-up to the game. He did a 'salaam' to the senior practitioner of his art, and the Indian great reciprocated.

It wasn't just that. Harbhajan interviewed Sahibzada Farhan, who was India's enemy No 1 in Dubai a few months ago, and it all looked pretty cordial. But the frame of the day was when the off-spinner had a long conversation with Misbah ul Haq.

One couldn't help going back to the 2007 T20 final, when Misbah took on Bhajji and almost single-handedly turned the game. With Misbah still there, the Indian offie chose not to bowl the last over, and Joginder Sharma won the match for India. We don't know if that was discussed, but you could see the friendly vibes of the two greats.

Not too far away from the cricket action, Shabana Azmi, one of India's greatest actresses, was speaking at the Ceylon Literary & Arts Festival. Recently, she was seen in a meaty role in a cricket-related film, Ghoomer, and when TOI asked her how she feels about all that is happening in the sport, Azmi said: "We keep forgetting that cricketers from both sides of the border are friends with each other, and it's important that sports and arts should transcend national boundaries," adding that it should act as an "adhesive" between the 2 nations.

It drew quite a round of applause from the small gathering. And once you left the confines of the little auditorium and walked towards the massive Premadasa, you could see Indian and Pakistani fans getting their faces painted by the same artist. Of course, the Indians outnumbered the Pakistanis, but there wasn't an iota of animosity. During Pakistan's reply, at the fall of their sixth wicket in the 12th over, fans in green began exiting the ground.

An Indian fan playfully told them, "You are leaving?" One Pakistanis replied, "We all have to leave at some point," and then they shook hands.

Probably there's not much on the field either beyond the desperate desire to win a game of cricket. But then, that's not for public consumption.


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