More Than Just a Game

India and Pakistan return to the sporting field for the first time since the cross-border tensions earlier this year. Swaroop Swaminathan & Firoz Mirza draw parallels to the 1999 WC match, what it meant and how the players felt.

- Swaroop Swaminathan & Firoz Mirza

One Indian flag was burnt. There were three arrests and as many as nine people were asked to vacate the premises. The last time India and Pakistan went to war in 1999, the rhetoric and the violence surrounding the Super Six fixture during the 1999 World Cup descended into troubling territory.

Matches featuring the two Asian neighbours have frequently witnessed rhetoric and war metaphors, but it's seldom played amid the backdrop of actual war on the battlefield. It's why Sunday's Asia Cup fixture may be different and can be directly compared to the game played in Manchester all those moons ago in 1999.

The two nuclear-armed countries may not be at war with each other, but these are extraordinary times. Post the Pahalgam tragedy in April, an armed conflict broke out between the two nations. Air strikes, missile attacks and drones threatened to fracture already dicey diplomatic relationships between the two nations. Also, do remember the centre's stance with respect to Operation Sindoor, India's military response to the Pahalgam terror attacks. "Today's India thinks differently and acts differently," Rajnath Singh, the defence minister, said in Parliament in July. "Operation Sindoor was paused as the armed forces had achieved the desired politico-military objectives."

On the other side of the aisle, a few members of the wider cricketing fraternity have maintained that sport and politics shouldn't mix. But that's kind of missing the point. Wherever there's sport, geopolitics and political maneuvering lurk in the shadows.

The Asia Cup itself has felt the pull of geopolitical tensions over the decades. Nascent editions of this tournament have seen boycotts by both India (when Sri Lanka hosted it in 1986) and Pakistan (when India hosted it in 1990-91).