Islamabad, Pakistan – When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed parliament on July 29, greater than two months after the four-day Could conflict with Pakistan, he hailed India’s navy motion – dubbed “Operation Sindoor” – as a “victory”, however stated it was not over.
“Operation Sindoor stays energetic and resolute,” Modi stated throughout his 102-minute deal with.
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Two months later, after India beat Pakistan in a gripping Asia Cup cricket last on September 28, Modi invoked the spectre of warfare once more whereas congratulating the victors. “Operation Sindoor on the video games discipline. Consequence is identical – India wins! Congrats to our cricketers,” he posted on X.
#OperationSindoor on the video games discipline.
Consequence is identical – India wins!
Congrats to our cricketers.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 28, 2025
The message, say analysts, was clear: The Asia Cup, meant to have fun cricket internationally’s largest continent, had change into a battlefield between India and Pakistan, and cricket itself had became the newest weapon of warfare.
Modi’s feedback capped weeks of bitter acrimony, each on and off the sector, that got here to dominate a match that started amid bitterness. The flashpoint after the ultimate was India’s determination to not settle for the Asia Cup trophy from Mohsin Naqvi, who’s the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) chair in addition to the Pakistan Cricket Board chairman and, considerably, Pakistan’s federal minister for inside, one of the crucial highly effective civilian positions within the nation.
“Now we have determined to not take the Asia Cup trophy from the ACC chairman, who occurs to be one of many major [political] leaders of Pakistan,” Devajit Saikia, the chairman of the Board of Management for Cricket in India (BCCI), informed the Indian information company ANI after the ultimate.
The ACC underneath Naqvi, as a substitute of handing the trophy and winner medals over to the Indian group regardless, took them away from the rostrum, leaving India to have fun with a makeshift “shadow trophy”.
Naqvi additionally hit again at Modi’s social media submit that in contrast the win to a battlefield victory. “If warfare was your measure of delight, historical past already information your humiliating defeats at Pakistan’s palms. No cricket match can rewrite that fact. Dragging warfare into sport solely exposes desperation and disgraces the very spirit of the sport,” the Pakistani minister wrote on X.
If warfare was your measure of delight, historical past already information your humiliating defeats at Pakistan’s palms. No cricket match can rewrite that fact. Dragging warfare into sport solely exposes desperation and disgraces the very spirit of the sport https://t.co/lqiUATm3wX
— Mohsin Naqvi (@MohsinnaqviC42) September 29, 2025
The Asia Cup was mired in controversy even earlier than a ball was bowled, with voices in India – politicians, broadcasters and former gamers – urging the BCCI to boycott Pakistan. Suryakumar Yadav, the Indian captain, confronted a backlash at dwelling after being seen shaking palms with Naqvi and Pakistan captain Salman Ali Agha at a pre-tournament information convention.
Throughout India’s first match on September 15, the group declined to shake palms with Pakistani gamers, a gesture repeated in subsequent fixtures, together with the ultimate.
For Irfan Nooruddin, a professor of Indian politics at Georgetown College, the aborted trophy ceremony was the “fruits of rising jingoism” in India.
He stated the Indian group would sadly be remembered for refusing to shake palms with opponents and declining an award from an official performing in his formal capability.
However he additionally criticised Naqvi.
“Nobody emerges from this fiasco trying good. Naqvi’s determination to take the trophy and medals displays poor judgement and style, as do his social media posts. Sadly, politics and cricket are intrinsically linked in South Asia, and it’s time for cricketing governance to require that its management relinquish any political roles,” he informed Al Jazeera.
Sporting gestures turned bitter
The 2 sides haven’t staged a bilateral cricket collection because the 2008 Mumbai assaults, by which gunmen with hyperlinks to Pakistan killed 166 individuals, other than a short three-match collection in India in late 2012.
Since then, they’ve met solely in multiteam occasions. The final last between them was the 2017 Champions Trophy in London, when Pakistan famously upset India at The Oval.
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have deteriorated for years and plunged additional this April after the Pahalgam assault in Indian-administered Kashmir, when gunmen killed 26 civilians.
India blamed Pakistan for the killings and, amongst different measures, withdrew its participation from the six-decade-old Indus Waters Treaty, which governs the six rivers of the Indus basin.
Pakistan denied duty, however in early Could, the neighbours fought an intense four-day aerial warfare, concentrating on one another’s navy bases with missiles and drones, probably the most critical confrontation between them in almost three a long time.
Even earlier than these clashes, sporting ties had frayed: India refused to journey to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy in February, the primary main international match Pakistan had hosted since 1996.
Hartosh Singh Bal, government editor on the Indian political month-to-month The Caravan, stated that sport has little capability to thaw diplomatic tensions when tribalism and hostility are being stoked.
“I do not know of what developed on the Pakistani aspect, but when the Indian board needed cricket to be a automobile for diplomatic hostility, then they need to have opted out of the match,” Bal informed Al Jazeera of the Asia Cup last.
“As soon as they made the selection to play, the gamers ought to have averted the boorishness displayed in avoiding handshakes or not accumulating the trophy,” he added.
Fragile cricket diplomacy
The weaponisation of cricket as an instrument of battle marks a 180-degree shift from how the game has lengthy functioned on the subcontinent – as a software of diplomacy, even on the most tense moments in bilateral ties.
In early 1987, weeks after India lined up forces alongside the disputed border between the neighbours, Pakistan’s navy ruler, Basic Ziaul Haq, visited India underneath Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership to observe a cricket match.
At the same time as gamers of the 2 sides steadily engaged in heated banter and sledging on the sector, the game served as a uncommon enviornment that allowed the neighbours to handle their hostilities within the years that adopted. India and Pakistan collectively hosted the 1996 World Cup, after which India toured Pakistan for one-day matches in 1997.
Then, in 1999, Pakistan returned to India for a full Take a look at collection, barely eight months after each nations had examined nuclear bombs, sparking nationalist frenzy on either side of the border and triggering international fears of a battle involving atomic weapons.
The 1999 go to produced one among cricket’s most memorable scenes. After their victory in Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium, Pakistan’s gamers jogged a lap across the floor and had been met with a standing ovation.
The Pakistani group’s supervisor then was Shehryar Khan, a former diplomat and a relative of Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, India’s former captain.
His son, Ali Khan, an affiliate professor on the Lahore College of Administration Sciences (LUMS), stated that governments have traditionally tried, typically discreetly, to make use of cricket to chill hostilities. This has now modified, he added.
“The Indian authorities’s hostility in direction of Pakistan is unprecedented. They could have their causes, however the poisoning of minds has unfold to a a lot larger a part of the inhabitants,” Ali Khan informed Al Jazeera.
He prompt that after the Pahalgam assault, calls to boycott the match meant that when New Delhi opted to play, the best approach to blunt home backlash was to point out additional hostility on the sector.
“I don’t assume you may pin the blame on the Pakistan group on this event. They didn’t initially behave in a hostile method that was exterior the spirit of the sport, and of sporting encounters total,” Khan, who can be the writer of Cricket in Pakistan: Nation, Id, and Politics, added.
Politics eclipses cricket
The Could confrontation concerned aerial engagements and using missiles and drones. Pakistan stated it shot down no less than six Indian jets. India stated it broken Pakistani airbases and degraded air-defence property.
The ceasefire on Could 10, which Pakistan says was brokered by the US, a declare India rejects, didn’t finish the narrative battle.
Both sides framed the episode as a vindication of their positions. Pakistan highlighted aerial successes and praised the US president for “brokering the peace”, nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. India insisted that its superiority had stopped the escalation, with none third-party intervention.
Modi, in his July 29 speech, stated {that a} Pakistani navy official had “pleaded” with Indian forces to cease. “Their officer informed ours, ‘Don’t hit us any extra; we will’t endure any longer’,” the Indian prime minister stated.
Bal and different commentators argue that Modi used the disaster to attain political factors. “There may be nothing that Modi is not going to milk for political acquire,” the journal editor stated.
Former Pakistani Excessive Commissioner to India Abdul Basit agreed.
“The warfare hysteria from his viewpoint can be obligatory for home politics. There are elections in Bihar subsequent month, and state elections subsequent yr,” he stated, referring to imminent state elections in one among India’s largest states, and subsequent polls.
Pakistani political analyst Cyril Almeida prompt that Modi had been rattled by worldwide reactions to the Could conflict, after which Islamabad seems to have diplomatically bought its narrative higher.
“In punching down on sportsmen, he appears eager to vary the narrative in no matter small method he can,” Almeida informed Al Jazeera.
Camaraderie turns chilly
Regardless of the coolness between governments, relationships amongst many gamers have often been cordial.
Earlier than Pakistani gamers had been excluded from the Indian Premier League, the world’s greatest franchise cricket league, after the 2008 Mumbai assaults, a number of had featured within the inaugural season and received admiration.
Subsequently, regardless of assembly solely in multi-team occasions, gamers from each groups have proven camaraderie on the sector, with iconic Indian gamers Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma significantly well-liked in Pakistan.
However with these older stars not on the group, and the arrival of a more moderen era, analysts say the private bonds that when softened political friction are weakening.
Ali Khan argued that earlier generations shared a extra sporting outlook, born of extra frequent contact, whereas the current era has had fewer alternatives to construct ties.
“I additionally really feel that the setting is so hostile in India that nobody would danger opposing what is basically a authorities directive to take care of a really hostile stance in direction of Pakistan,” he stated.
“So had these senior gamers, similar to Kohli or others, nonetheless been within the group, I believe they might have struggled to take a distinct path, even when they didn’t essentially wish to do this.”
Livelihood over rivalry?
Whereas the lads’s groups usually are not scheduled to satisfy once more any time quickly, the ladies’s sides are resulting from face one another in Sri Lanka on October 5, through the Girls’s World Cup, hosted by India.
The broader calendar, nonetheless, is constrained by politics. Following India’s absence from Champions Trophy matches in Pakistan – India’s matches and the ultimate had been hosted in Dubai on the BCCI’s insistence – the PCB protested. An settlement was reached that Pakistan wouldn’t journey to India for tournaments via 2027, affecting occasions such because the Girls’s World Cup and the 2026 males’s T20 World Cup, and would play its matches at impartial venues as India did through the Champions Trophy.
For Ali Khan, the distinction between the 1999 tour and as we speak is the relative unwillingness of each governments to re-establish contact.
“There was little of the hostility amongst the final inhabitants that we see as we speak,” he stated. “Sadly, as we speak, we’re in uncharted territory. Relations have by no means been worse, and… for an prolonged interval. Folks-to-people contacts have been severed. I see no hope of a reversal until the management on either side exhibits power and braveness to look past themselves and their slim pursuits,” he added.
Nooruddin is much less pessimistic. Whereas he condemned the open hostilities seen on the match, he argued that almost all residents in each nations care extra about livelihoods than grand gestures of rivalry.
“Whipping up nationalistic fervour solely advantages the politicians who search to distract and divide, moderately than unify and govern. It’s onerous to be optimistic within the present second, however leaderships finally do change, and, once they do, new prospects for cooperation emerge,” the Washington, DC-based tutorial stated.
However Islamabad-based Almeida warned that Modi’s return to energy final yr for a 3rd time period, which runs till 2029, means speedy change is unlikely any time quickly.
Some analysts in Pakistan had hoped a 3rd time period would push Modi in direction of a legacy of peacemaking. As an alternative, Almeida stated, the Modi of 2025 seems to be an “unreconstructed determine who seeks dominance, not lodging”. Even in cricket.
