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So, is everyone ready for the semi-finals and final matches of the Cricket World Cup? The India-Pakistan match at Mohali has captured the imagination of the entire Subcontinent. In sports terms, this match has variously been described as “The Mother of All Matches”; the South Asian equivalent of a Red Sox-Yankees game; and the Indian-Pakistani version of El Clásico. In allegorical terms, the match is being seen by political commentators as more significant than India-Pak peace talks, Partition, and a South Asian nuclear war combined.
“We don’t care who wins or loses, South Asia/cricket/the bookies will be the real winner!” declaim the peaceniks. “The Green cloud is coming to Mohali!” shout the eco-warriors. “Please just let this be over soon,” groan the rest of the world. Bad puns and dirty SMSs abound, all meant to whip up patriotic fervour and galvanize national team spirit. And yet, to some, tomorrow’s India-Pakistan semi-final match just seems like the equivalent of a really bad fight in divorce court: two people who once were one, now fighting over the division of property and who gets to keep the family dog, while extended families on both sides gloat and eat popcorn in the stands.
Still, there are those who claim the match is a harmless way of working out the tensions that continuously buffet India and Pakistan; better to send twenty-two men out to a cricket pitch with a bat and ball than twenty thousand men onto a battlefield with guns and bombs. Yet Pakistan-India matches are never truly without their own tensions. Analysts are already looking ahead: should Pakistan do the unthinkable and beat India tomorrow, they’ll go on to play the final against either Sri Lanka or New Zealand in Mumbai. The thought of a hostile crowd, stirred up by ultra-nationalists Shiv Sena, is not a pleasant prospect, but it hasn’t stopped five thousand extra Pakistanis from trying to get Indian visas and go across the border to witness the match. “At least the Pakistanis will be used to all the guns,” as the popular SMS joke goes.
There’s another interesting, and somewhat disturbing, trend that’s emerged from the prospect of the India-Pakistan semi final: Pakistanis’ taunting of the Indian team by using the metaphor of claiming Indian women as their own personal booty. “Get out your Sheilas and your Munnis,” crow the Pakistani supporters to their Indian counterparts on Twitter. “Prepare the dolis!” “Lock up your daughters!” And on and on and on. People are using this opportunity to express the fact of their sexual repression and their deepest imperialist fantasies at the same time. It’s as if the Pakistani men think of themselves as marauding Moghul invaders, ready to swoop in on the helpless Indians and take away their choicest models and Bollywood actresses should Pakistan win the match tomorrow.
Then there’s the people who think that a victory in Mohali, and by extension, the final match of the World Cup, will avenge the affronts to our national honor that have been taking place with such audacious regularity. Never mind that Raymond Davis went home and that drones continue to attack our civilians - as long as we win the World Cup, this will prove our honor and dignity and sovereignty to the world! Never mind that we are South Asia’s economic basketcase - we’ll bring home the World Cup! All I can say to those people is that the trophy will make a very nice begging bowl...
But there’s another unaddressed aspect of watching our boys play and win honors on the cricket field, one which gives pleasure to the whole country in these difficult, troubled times. We can turn to sports psychology to help us understand it: the concept of team cohesion, which sports social psychologist Albert Carron defines as “a dynamic process which is reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of goals and objectives.” Not only do the members of a successful team put aside their differences, but they transcend their individual skills and abilities, turn to each other in liking and respect, and engender that elusive X factor that enables them to perform feats of sporting magic - such as winning the Cricket World Cup.
Examining this concept of team cohesion, the special appeal of this match suddenly falls into place for me and all my fellow Pakistanis, no matter how skeptical you are about the appeal of cricket in general. What happens on the field when our team wins a match is something we all desperately wish would happen in our country at large. Team cohesion is something that Pakistan could really use right now, and we’re looking to our boys in Mohali to teach us something about how to make it happen for us all.
Bina Shah is the author of Slum Child
