The show goes on

After hours of drama and brinkmanship in Dubai yesterday, the Pakistan-UAE match in the Asia Cup T20 tournament finally got underway - but not before a telling compromise. Zimbabwean match referee Andy Pycroft, who was behind the handshake controversy cropping up in the Pakistan-India encounter last Sunday, was forced to apologise to Pakistan captain and manager. For a match referee, the very custodian of cricket's integrity, to offer an apology is no trivial matter. Perhaps, a first in the history of cricket. It is, in fact, an extraordinary admission that the neutrality expected of his office had been compromised.

Pakistan's principled protest thus stands vindicated and PCB deserves credit for not letting the matter slide under the carpet. Sportsmanship is not a courtesy to be suspended at whim. By demanding accountability, Pakistan reminded the India-led ICC and the wider cricketing fraternity that the spirit of the game is too sacred to be compromised.

The ugly episode, however, exposes how deeply Prime Minister Narendra Modi's brand of chest-thumping nationalism has seeped into arenas where it does not belong. Cricket — once a gentleman's game celebrated for camaraderie — is being weaponised to serve Hindutva-fuelled politics. The refusal to exchange greetings, the venomous post-match speeches and the constant invocation of war metaphors reek of insecurity.

India seems determined to confuse a cricket turf with a battlefield, and in doing so it has tarnished its own credibility. But what does India seek to prove? That avoiding handshakes can somehow avenge its humiliation when its fighter jets were downed in the four-day duel this past May? Or that dragging cricket into propaganda wars will mask insecurities at home? Such theatrics may play well to domestic hawks, but they do little to uphold the dignity of the game. In fact, they expose a brittle nationalism that confuses hostility with strength.

The show indeed goes on. Cricket will outlast petty politics, and the fans will remember which nation upheld its spirit and which chose to corrode it.