AMRIT MATHUR

Asked about the significance of the Pakistan game, Virat Kohli came up with the perfect politically correct straight-bat answer. Same as any other game, said he, without batting an eyelid. Our aim is to win every match for India. We don’t think of the opposition -- all are equal.

The response to this ‘statesman like’ gyaan? A big yawn!

Virat was only echoing a verbal formula cleverly manufactured by senior statesman Rahul Dravid many years ago. Dravid’s classic description of an India-Pakistan match (‘no big deal, it is a game of cricket played by 22 players with bat and ball like any other’) became the template for future Indian captains. Whenever this question is posed, the captain pulls out the time-tested, can’tgo-wrong Dravid doctrine.

For long, India vs Pakistan was far from ordinary; it was instead a high pressure izzat game involving national pride. In the past, everything with Pakistan was us-versus-them; cricket included and anything less than victory was a defeat. Players got sucked into this toxic atmosphere; they morphed from flannel-wearing participants in a cricket game to uniformed trained fighters. Set against India-Pakistan conflict, cricket became a war zone.

These clashes produced heroes and villains and defined the careers of players. Cricket matches became an opportunity to secure sporting immortality by engraving their name on cricket’s honour board of valour.

Victory guaranteed respect in perpetuity (Ajay Jadeja smashing Waqar Younus in Bangalore/ SRT against Waqar/ Wasim at Centurion, South Africa). Failure (Chetan Sharma at Sharjah) was a permanent taint, never forgotten.

Such hype has fortunately receded. As teams played each