Indian cricket’s Pakistan problem: Can you monetise patriotism? | Cricket

India’s most recent encounter with Pakistan in the Asia Cup was celebrated as a patriotic spectacle: a win dedicated to the armed forces and those affected by the Pahalgam attack. Such declarations, however, expose something deeper: a strategy of playing politics with sport, hypocrisy masked as principle.

Beneath this posturing and tokenism lies a contradiction too stark to ignore. This is not just sport. It is cynical theatre in which administrators, players and commentators attempt to…