Last week, Pakistan leg-spinner Yasir Shah broke an 82-year-old record to become the fastest bowler to reach 200 wickets in the history of Test cricket. Shah has to be one of the most exciting leg-spinners of this generation. Batsmen all over the world are trying to read his googlies. But he doesn’t have the opportunity to challenge the best batsman of his time, Virat Kohli.
Just imagine a contest between Kohli and Shah, on a fifth-day pitch, in sultry and humid conditions, in front of a packed crowd, either at Karachi or Kolkata. Or Cheteshwar Pujara’s technique getting tested by Mohammad Amir on an early winter morning, with a tinge of grass on the pitch and moisture in the air, either at Mohali or Lahore. Add to it the fiercest rivalry – between India and Pakistan.
Just like Saqlain Mushtaq versus Sachin Tendulkar at Chepauk in 1999, or Sunil Gavaskar against the Pakistani spin bowling department on a crumbling pitch in Bengaluru in 1987. Both innings were a masterclass in how to tackle spin bowling on a wearing pitch.
We were still lucky to witness some of those moments, the periods of the ’80s and early ’90s where Pakistan dominated India, and then India getting the better towards the end of the last century and keeping their dominance intact in the first decade of 2000s.
We saw a 16-year-old Tendulkar hit the wily Abdul Qadir for four sixes, Ajay Jadeja toy with Waqar Younis’ deadly yorkers in the 1996 World Cup quarter-final, a young and fiery Shoaib Akhtar destroy the stumps of Rahul Dravid and Tendulkar in succession to announce his international arrival, and India win a Test series in Pakistan for the first time at Rawalpindi on that historic tour of 2004.
The current Indian cricket fans can’t understand why it was okay to hate Javed Miandad and love Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the same breath. What it was to see Venkatesh Prasad exact revenge upon Aamir Sohail in the 1996 World Cup quarter-final. Why every Pakistani cricket fan of the ’90s and early 2000s loved to hate Rahul Dravid. How much they wanted to have a batsman like Tendulkar, or we wanted to have a bowler like Wasim Akram. Pakistan always wished to have the batting might of India’s, and on this side of the border, we always wondered how Pakistan kept producing a factory line of world class fast bowlers despite similar conditions and weather.
I was witness to the atmosphere and tension of the dressing room at an Indo-Pak game. During my stint as media manager of the Indian Cricket Team, India played Pakistan in two T20Is in 2016. The first was at the Asia Cup in Bangladesh, the second a World T20 group-stage clash at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens. Both games were low-scoring affairs, where the Indian batting was tested but emerged victorious thanks to Virat Kohli.
Even as administrative support staff, who have nothing to do with the pressure of an India-Pakistan game, you feel the pressure. If this is our state, imagine the state of the players. Victories in both the games were celebrated long into the night, more with a sense of relief, a feeling that “we cannot lose to Pakistan”.
So no matter how many times a player says “it’s just another game”, it isn’t. It is more than a game.
Just imagine the same intensity and anxiety over the course of a five-match Test series. Where the young brigade of Kohli is up against the forever unpredictable and maverick Pakistan. Yes, everyone is aware of the political situation between the countries, which dictates they cannot play bilateral series – but as a result, fans and players of this generation can’t witness the most remarkable rivalries in the game.
PS: I feel with the current Indian bowling and Pakistan batting, India will win the Test series.
(Nishant Arora is an award-winning cricket journalist who has worked for CNN-IBN and India Today in the past. More recently, Nishant served a stint as the media manager of the Indian Cricket Team.)
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