The defeat is beyond cricket, for Pakistan

The news is not that Pakistan lost a cricket match to India on the night of September 14, 2025. The news is that no one cared.

In Pakistan, not long ago, the game of cricket was worshipped almost as closely as religion. A match was once more than a game. It was an event, a festivity, a common joy, a shared heartbreak, a collective source of patriotic fervor. But none of these emotions stirred that night. Only a mournful silence remained. A silence that signaled that something had gone wrong, something had broken, something had been lost.

The night was a stark insight into how countries decay, incrementally, little by little, step by step, and then at once. It starts with one wrong, then two wrongs, and then there is a pile of irrevocable wrongs. It's the vote that's stolen first, then it's dignity, then happiness, then spirit, and then hope.

The match was only a small symbolic reminder of our collective decline. If to look closely, a far greater reminder stares at us in the face. The country has been struck by one of the worst floods in its history. More than 1.05 million acres of farmland inundated, affecting over 5.1 million people in Punjab alone. The damage is staggering: 661 kilometers of roads and 234 bridges destroyed, crops devastated with losses of 60% in rice, 35% in cotton, and 30% in sugarcane. A catastrophe of this scale should have elicited a collective response and a sense of unanimous grief. Yet the tragedy has already begun to vanish from our screens and would soon fade from our lives entirely. All those hapless people who have lost their homes, livestock, crops, and entire life savings stand directionless, not knowing where to look, much like the rest of the nation.

Such disorientation seems to never have been witnessed before by this country, as if it has lost its convergence point altogether, leaving everyone feeling lost, forlorn and dejected.

It is said that human beings die when they don’t have anything to look forward to. Today, Pakistanis stand right in the center of this theory, they don’t have much to look forward to. Many have left, and those who have stayed are left with only a fragile flicker of hope as the country continues to unravel under the big shadows of small men.

The universe runs on a system, and to defy the laws of nature is to invite consequences. Then, whether you encroach on the rivers or disrupt democratic systems, havoc is inevitable. Nations need a sense of shared goal to thrive, and a gravitational force to keep everything together, but that gravitational force cannot be forged through stolen mandates.

As resilient as the people of this country are, the defeat that night resounded a much bigger one, the defeat of the happiness and spirit of our people. The match is not the real cause for worry, but the fate of this country that’s fast turning into a wheel cart on the loose.