Imran was an early hero of mine. The swagger, with the shirt open, shining the red ball on his flannels, he was up on my bedroom wall, a priceless Sportsweek poster
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Imran Khan and Sunil Gavaskar were responsible for me almost failing my ICSE Board exams. It was 1978, India had travelled to Pakistan for three Tests. The Little Master, well the OG Little Master, Sunny, pretty much alone, was facing Imran, Sarfraz Nawaz, Sikandar Bhakt, and Iqbal Qasim, surrounded by hostile crowds.
My Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Maths preparations were screaming for attention, but watching these battles on my black and white ECTV was far more engaging. We had one channel — Doordarshan, that relayed the matches, uninterrupted. Sure, there was war on the borders but the battle inside the Gadaffi, Iqbal and National stadia, stayed untainted. What was played inside the stadium, stayed within the stadium, as Imran reverse swinging the ball and Gavaskar textbook square cutting and straight driving, was far more riveting than my textbooks.
Imran was an early hero of mine. The swagger, with the shirt open, shining the red ball on his flannels, he was up on my bedroom wall, a priceless Sportsweek poster.
Immy and Sunny were two warriors, locked in a war fought across 22 yards of shorn grass not 760 kms of the LOC. (The only line of control was Imran’s bowling discipline).
Cut to 1986, the Sunny-Immy friendship had grown, India were touring England. Sunny was planning retirement, over a lunch in London, he mentioned this to Imran, who said simply that his team were to tour India the following summer, it would be no fun, hollow almost, to compete without him. Who would be his challenge? He convinced Gavaskar to delay his retirement, and the rest is history, as the Indian opener completed 10000 runs, and Pakistan went on to beat India in India.
The 1987 World Cup, the two supposedly warring nations, held firm to bring the tournament to the Sub-continent for the first time — NKP Salve from our end, and Air Marshall Nur Khan from Pakistan. The two nations were emphatic that somehow, the cricket powers that be, needed to move away from the England-Australia stranglehold. Yes, Indo -Pak cricket battles, were eagerly anticipated, because the problems stayed away from the cricket pitch. Like the Ashes, both the India and Pakistan cricket teams seem to put that little bit of extra effort.
Post the Sunny/Immy era, a young Sachin Tendulkar pitted his youth against the wiles of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Saqlain Mustaq. These battles were joyful as the best went up against the best.
And then in the 2000s something changed.
What exactly allowed the blood and the ill will to spill onto the cricket I can’t pin point. Could have been the simmering tensions over Kargil… or maybe Uri, but Operation Sindoor tipped the scales and with Pahlagam, it boiled over, sadly, to a point of no return.
I won’t pretend to know what’s happening behind the scenes, but when a man from one nation who could convince one from another to not retire, we’ve descended to men from opposing teams who refuse to shake hands — enmity truly reigns supreme.
Indo-Pak cricket withstood border disputes, but the boundary line stayed sacred. The politics of hate has entered the DNA of the players — that a Pakistan cricket chief, would ‘steal’ the Asia Cup and take it back to Islamabad with him, Pak players using bats to substitute as machine guns and indicate planes being bombed.
For many years, the joke in cricket circles, was on any given day, which Pakistan would show up to play — would it be the skilled, underrated but talented men, of Imran and Javed Miandad’s vintage who could beat any team, or the rag tag indisciplined side that could lose to any side.
As the T20 World Cup 2026 kicks off tomorrow, the issue is will Pakistan even show up to play us next Sunday.
Their argument is, they’re standing by their neighbours Bangladesh (ironical that it was us who helped Bangladesh (then East Bengal) gain Independence from Pakistan in 1971).
As Immy languishes in jail, and Sunny moves into the commentary box, the future is anyone’s guess. But in truth, politics should have never entered cricket.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, filmmaker and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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