For love of the game

Cricket and hatred: even two-year-olds would disagree

“Going to Delhi?” the Immigration Officer at the Lahore Airport asked me with a sharp tone. Upon my nodding, he said, “We’d better win this third one-day. 3-0 would be great!” Barely five feet away a mother was trying to convince her two-year-old to let go of his bat so the security guys could put it through a scanner. The mother-child interaction also underscored that it isn’t just us adults who are consumed by this passion for cricket. I couldn’t help but laugh as the child shrieked as his mother took away the bat and threw it on a belt leading to the scanning machine. “He loves his cricket,” she shrugged and said amid her son’s screams. No one was surprised. In the subcontinent, this is perfectly adult and rational behavior — to love your cricket and to shriek with disappointment if things didn’t go your way.

On the flight to Delhi I wasn’t sure whether we would even find a ticket for the last one-day game at the beautiful Feroze Shah Kotla ground. On the plane, I sat next to a bat manufacturer. He told me fascinating stories about how finicky players are about the weights of their bat — reminding me Rahul Dravid’s wife saying that if she packed only one set of clothes for him he wouldn’t notice but if the weight of his bat was off by a gram he would be upset. I have an enormous amount of respect for cricket players in particular and all sportsmen in general. They make sacrifices most of us can’t even imagine.

The conversation with the bat manufacturer dashed any hopes that I had of not thinking about the game. Therefore, upon landing in Delhi there was only one thing on my mind — buy tickets for the match. Most people I spoke to, understandably, told me that it would be extremely difficult to find tickets. This made sense. Imagine an India-Pakistan game in Lahore and your chances of finding tickets outside the stadium. But, ah ha, there was a twist in the tale. Since India had already lost the series, a lot of people may not show up. So, on a Sunday at 7am, we started off for the stadium. It was the second coldest day in Delhi in 22 years. Crazy? No. Perfectly rational. The child at the Lahore airport and I love our cricket.

The funny thing about being in India is that most people can almost always tell that you are not from India. As I got out of the “auto” (rickshaw), a guy with an Indian flag started staring at me. He wouldn’t stop staring — yes that kind of staring. So I smiled and eventually walked over, smiling and putting out my hand and told him what he already suspected, “I am from Pakistan — Lahore. Kya haal chaal ha?” He exclaimed, “Abay… welcome to India, sir. Welcome to India!” Warmth on a cold day — reassuring. I asked him about the possibility of tickets and he said it was impossible. I searched the faces around him. Being a litigator puts you in the habit of reading people and their intentions. One man’s face reflected the delightful possibility that he might be into black marketing. So I mused aloud when looking at him, “Well, I guess we need to find people willing to sell.” And we turned around and walked. Lo and behold! The guy followed us and mumbled as he handed me a slip of paper, “Make a left on the next traffic signal and call this number.” I told him I didn’t have a cell phone. It got better. “Follow me,” he said.

And so he led us to the promised land. He wasn’t Muslim but he kept trying to convince us he was one. He insisted on calling himself “Mr Qureshi”. Why? I don’t know. Maybe government and media propaganda had convinced him that Pakistanis only buy tickets from or trust Muslims. No, the religion we follow there is cricket. But I let him lie and told the lawyer inside me to shut up. We bought tickets at five times their normal price but who gives a toss. It was an India-Pakistan game, a live cricket game and we had tickets!

Mr Qureshi also reminded me of how central cricket is to the lives of so many people but in fascinatingly diverse ways. Mr Qureshi told me he hadn’t been inside a cricket stadium in a decade but during the World Cup 2011 he had sold tickets on the black market for as high as INR 75,000. Here was a guy who loved cricket and the cricket fever but for reasons completely different than mine — he made money off it. And good money.

The match itself was exciting. The loss didn’t really hurt since we had already won the series and I can’t remember an India-Pakistan one-day series in which the other side didn’t win a single game. India did not want to lose 3-0 and they made it obvious. Their batting was ordinary — apart from a couple of sublime strokes from Yuvi and Dhoni — but their fielding saved 30-35 runs and made the difference. Congratulations to India on a well-deserved win.

Watching an India-Pakistan game in Delhi brings you pretty close to being exposed to the epitome of anti-Pakistan feelings in north India. Some of the slogans were ridiculously racist. A “pundit jee”, as his friends called him, was sitting behind me and just couldn’t swallow someone wearing a Team Pakistan shirt. He and his friends even made the comment, “try getting out of here alive if you Pakistanis win” and “hang all of Pakistan team like we hung Kasab”. Their slogans weren’t just anti-Pakistan. They were anti-Muslim. This was a far far cry from the last India-Pakistan game I watched in Lahore where Lahoris stood up when Sachin walked in, when India won and Lahore hugged Indians to congratulate them on a series win. Our dholwallahs played dhol outside the Qaddafi as Indians danced and Lahoris joined in that. We love our cricket but do people need to come to the stadium with hate for the other side. Am I generalising? Maybe but even when we played India in Delhi the last time, friends from Pakistan came back with similar stories. This is sad and I cannot stress that enough.

The people who weren’t hostile to a Team Pakistan shirt were Kashmiris or Indian Muslims. Tens of them, literally, told us in whispers “We are from Kashmir and support Pakistan”. They didn’t have the Team Pakistan shirt so, endearingly, many of them were in green sweaters — any green sweater would do. Seeing their disillusionment with the state of India was disturbing. I am willing to concede that Baloch feel a similar way. So regardless of wherever that happens, it is sad. But at least someone wasn’t being hostile in that stadium. Many Indian Muslims wanted their photo with me in my Team Pakistan shirt and they would only whisper, “I am a Muslim”. Maybe Pundit jee and his friends have a lot more influence than I suspected on my last trip. I am sure Pundit jee has cousins on the Pakistani side, aka Mullahs, who harbour similar sentiments but as far as I know we didn’t treat our Indian guests that way.

I stayed till the end when Misbah got the trophy and Pundit jee and his friends had, for good reason, left. The greenshirts lifted their arms and screamed with triumph on a cold Delhi night. I love Delhi and I love the Indian cricket team and I love the passion that cricket inspires. The Pundit jees on Indian side and extremists on the Pakistan side need to be sidelined. They don’t love their cricket nor are they passionate about it. All they want to perpetuate is hate. That just isn’t rational. Even our two-year-olds would disagree.

The writer is a Barrister, holds a Masters degree from Harvard Law School and a partner at a law firm. Contact: [email protected] or Twitter @wordoflaw. Views expressed here are strictly his own and not that of his law firm’s.