Editor,
What a contrast between the vulgarity of playing cricket for absolutely commercial reasons and acting “conscientious” as if the match (ie the victory over Pakistan) is a “tribute” to the victims of Pahalgam and their families!
Had India lost the match, even that “tribute” also couldn’t have been made possible! If the Indian team is sincere enough towards the Pahalgam victims, why don’t they handover the match fees and prize money (or that earned in the entire tournament) to any fund dedicated towards the benefits of the victims!
Or to the poor family of that selfless pony operator “Muslim” Syed Adil Hussain Shah who had valiantly sacrificed his life so as to save the “Hindu” tourists! Or donate it to those families whose farmland houses, along the international border, have got destroyed due to the Pakistani shelling in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor! Let’s make “standing with Pahalgam victims and families” a practical reality instead of playing to the gallery boosted with mere zealous empty “nationalist” rhetoric!
Will the Indian captain Surya Kumar Yadav, who termed India’s victory “a perfect return gift to India”, kindly answer whether this win will bring back those 26 victims to life! Or “gift” lives to those 20-odd vulnerable Indians along the border who got annihilated by the Pakistani shellings!
Either boycott Pakistan in every sphere if “Nationalism” has the final say or play cricket according to the spirit of the game, through handshakes with the Opposition, by separating it from politics! And even if the holy avenue of sports gets denigrated to the theatre of war, then at least stop issuing “patriotic” dialogues as suited in cheap commercial films!
This blatant hypocrisy of “Running with the Hare and Hunting with the Hounds” has indeed “gifted” a very bad taste in the mouth despite registration of victory in the match.
That a game is much more than a mere contest must be learnt from the high-jumper duo – Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi.
At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when they were tied for the top position after clearing 2.37 metres, they could have gone on and on to emerge as the singular Victor. But Barshim asked the referee “Can we have two golds?”! As the referee nodded positively, Barshim settled for it with the endorsement of Tamberi.
In the words of Barshim: “We athletes are competitive. That’s in our nature and that’s what we have been doing for so many years. But you know, for me, it is also very important not to forget the real reason for sport, the real message – this is still sport, it’s still a tool for us to come together and build this kind of relationship … This is Humanity, solidarity, unity, it’s just like peace coming all together”.
Yes, despite hard competition for success or hunger for glory; sportsmanship, values, honesty, dignity and feeling of mutual respect should never be compromised.
Kajal Chatterjee,
Kolkata
Via e-mail
