On the 15th of Feb 2015, India and Pakistan will lock horns again in a World Cup match. Had the match been scheduled a day before – that is, on Valentine’s Day – it would have been poetic but inappropriate.

This is not, has never been, and will never be a sweetheart encounter.

An India-Pakistan cricket match is about grit, gore and glory, but mercifully on a cricket field instead of the border.

The beauty of sports is that it doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things, but is approached as if it does.

Cricket fanatics on both sides of the border – myself included – would be outraged by this assertion.

How could an India-Pakistan match not matter? That too in the World Cup? No, no, no. This is an event of earth-shattering proportions.

One tends to remember exactly what one did on that day, what meal they ate and where they watched the match.

1992 — Studying Cricket, watching Physics

 

I will forever remember the 1992 encounter at the SCG.

I was due to appear for my Maharashtra State Board exams the next day. My entire academic future was at stake. It felt like a minor inconvenience.

What mattered more was that this seemed to be a do-or-die encounter; both teams had started poorly and it was assumed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that whoever lost the match would have no chance to lift the Cup.