As India’s cricket organizing body has made clear, the country cannot simply opt out of an international commitment like this one, the T20 World Cup - especially one where its team is favored to win.
The rising tensions are tied to a number of factors - repeated militant attacks in India the disputed territory of Kashmir, where India accuses Pakistan of supporting militant groups and rising intolerance in both countries - that have almost entirely wiped out any exchange between two nations that otherwise overlap in shared history, passions and culture.īut the intensity of passions surrounding Sunday’s match draw on deeper reservoirs, issues of national identity that are wrapped into the fortunes of the competing cricket teams.Īnd despite calls for a boycott from Indian political leaders after a spasm of violence recently in Kashmir, the game is going ahead. The meeting on Sunday, the first in two years, comes as part of a World Cup. For a match to take place at all, even on neutral ground, players and fans have to hope tensions remain short of war and that the organizers can weather growing calls for a boycott. The ICC T20 World Cup match between India and Pakistan will be watched by hundreds of millions around the world, on televisions in remote villages, jumbo screens in crowded cities, phones in migrant labor tenements and flickering monitors in the living rooms of a diaspora spread across the world’s time zones.įace-offs on the cricket field between India and Pakistan, like the expected encounter on Sunday in Dubai, have become increasingly rare, a victim of the frosty relationship between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
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