Kazim AlamThe Indian cricket team scored a relatively easy win on September 14 against Pakistan at a T20 international faceoff in the 2025 Asia Cup in Dubai.
But what followed was no ordinary post-match ritual: Indian players walked off the field without shaking hands with their Pakistani counterparts, an unusual snub that generated online buzz about the vanishing traditions of what the British once endearingly called the gentleman’s game.
In his post-match remarks, Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav dedicated the win to India’s armed forces and vowed to stand by the families of the victims of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in India-administered Kashmir.
India held Pakistan indirectly responsible for the attack — which was firmly denied by Islamabad — that killed 26 people and resulted in a deadly four-day war in May between the two South Asian neighbours.
Four months after Pakistan and India clashed in the biggest air battle since World War II in terms of the number of aircraft involved, the sporting episode in Dubai has reignited debates about the weaponisation of cricket, the subcontinent’s most popular game, in service of a nationalist agenda.
“I wasn’t surprised when the Indian cricket team left the field without the customary handshake,” Khalid Hussain, a Karachi-based sports writer and analyst, tells TRT World.
He attributes the behaviour of the Indian players to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strategy of leveraging cricket as “an asset in the geo-political ambitions” that portrays Pakistan as a “mortal enemy” and uses the sport to “undermine its neighbour”.
Historically, cricket has served as a fragile bridge in India-Pakistan relations. The game has often facilitated back-channel diplomacy amid frozen diplomatic ties.
Matches in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, for instance, were heralded as “cricket diplomacy” where former Pakistani presidents Zia ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf and Indian premier Atal Bihari Vajpayee attended games to thaw relations.
But Hussain argues that the trend has reversed since the Modi-led Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rose to power in 2014. “(India) has systematically developed cricket into a weapon that it blatantly uses against Pakistan,” he says, pointing to India’s financial dominance in the sport as a tool for coercion.
A cultural unifier?
While acknowledging the nationalistic undercurrents in sports, Indian analyst Sandip Ghose downplays the notion of cricket as a pure cultural unifier.
“Sports as a ‘cultural bridge’ is an exaggerated notion,” he tells TRT World. “There is always an element of chauvinism and tribal element in competitive team sports – not just between nations but even at club-level matches,” he says.
Yet even the right-leaning Ghose concedes that the handshake snub was mishandled, calling it “a poor attempt at optical damage control” that impressed no one.
In fact, he says, a gracious handshake after victory “might have rubbed in the message more,” implying the gesture reflected pettiness rather than strength.
Public reaction in India, as gleaned from social media, shows a divide. Many Indians, furious over the Pahalgam attack, called for a boycott of the match against Pakistan. Their ire was directed at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the national governing body of the sport.
Ghose says the BCCI is “technically” an autonomous body. In public perception, however, the government could have easily influenced the BCCI to boycott matches against Pakistan “in view of public sentiments”, he says.
The Indian captain’s act of nationalist fervour drew sharp criticism, especially in Pakistan, for blending battlefield valour with sporting glory. Ghose calls it “unnecessary,” asserting that “Indian armed forces can fight their own battles” and that the match outcome bears no relevance to India’s military prowess.
Yet the expressions of nationalist bravado on the cricket field leave a mark on the collective psychology of spectators. While suggesting that such acts might even motivate Pakistani players for upcoming encounters, Hussain insists the unnecessary hostility only reinforces enemy perceptions among cricket fans.
“A vast majority of fans on either side of the border already see the other country as an enemy,” he says, linking it to the four-day war in May where Pakistan downed six Indian fighters – something that subsequently became a point of national pride.
Hussain sees this as a deliberate escalation, transforming cricket from a shared passion into a platform for militaristic nationalism. He laments the erosion of the sport’s spirit of camaraderie, contrasting today’s money-driven landscape with ideals like Nelson Mandela’s use of rugby to heal post-apartheid South Africa.
“In an ideal world, sport should build bridges,” he says. “But we don’t live in an ideal world. Today, sport is all about money. Cricket is all about money.”
Central to his critique is the role of international cricket’s governing bodies, which Hussain accuses of complicity.
“Unfortunately, there are no neutral bodies in the world of cricket,” he says, labelling the International Cricket Council (ICC) as “subservient to Indian interests”.
Despite the Indian team’s failure to observe etiquette and Yadav’s political statements, no sanctions have followed so far. “India will use cricket as a weapon against Pakistan and will do that with complete impunity,” Hussain says.
