Cricket: Divided countries with a single obsession

The first cricket tour this decade by India to Pakistan ended on Thursday. It was business as usual, with stones being thrown at the visiting fielders, but the fact they play at all is a sporting miracle.

If the mood that hovers over matches between India and Pakistan is unique in cricket, it is not surprising. On Tuesday the two sides met in a one-day international in Karachi and India stole an improbable victory from the jaws of defeat. On Thursday they met again in Lahore and the Pakistan openers Ijaz Ahmed and Shahid Afridi smashed the Indian attack all over the ground to win an emphatic victory.

In the same week Pakistani artillery shells killed 18 Indian civilians in the town of Kargil in Kashmir, and the Indian retaliation was claimed by Islamabad to have killed 20 civilians in Pakistan. That they manage to play cricket at all is little short of miraculous.

The relationship between the two countries is perennially bitter, bloody and fractious. Since gaining independence 50 years ago they have fought three full-blown wars and the struggle over Kashmir grinds on year after year. Even their clocks are at war, India's being half an hour behind Pakistan's so they do not have to celebrate Independence (which was declared at midnight) on the same day.

Cricket is the obsessional game of both countries, completely overshadowing all others (with the partial and arguable exception of hockey) and many of the fixtures down the years have been scarred by trouble.

The series that finished on Thursday was the first time in eight years that India have toured Pakistan. In that time Pakistan have twice cancelled tours of India, once in protest at the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque, once after the pitch at Bombay was dug up.

In the game in Karachi on Tuesday, Sachin Tendulkar, the Indian captain, took his side off the field after stones were thrown. Batsmen who treat the home bowling too contemptuously have been pelted, players have been manhandled. During India's last tour of Pakistan in 1989, spectators invaded the pitch to force the abandonment of a game which Pakistan looked like losing, and the Indian players ran for their lives.

Meetings in third countries have had their share of fun as well. When the teams played in Bradford, rival fans fought and Pakistanis burned the Indian flag. During the 1992 World Cup in Australia, spectators were arrested for chanting political slogans, while last month in Toronto the Pakistan batsman Inzamam-ul-Haq did a Cantona, charging up into the stand with his bat to assault a man who had been taunting him through a megaphone (it was not a political or religious taunt, though, he had been calling him a potato).

The expectation, then, is that there will be fireworks - so the only time I have seen the teams playing here, at Hyderabad in June, I was taken aback by the mild, studious, good-humoured atmosphere. Indians do not drink much and, in Hyderabad, which is the capital of Andhra Pradesh, a dry state, they don't drink at all, except illegally. That removes one cause of noise and commotion.

Indians go to matches in family groups with far more women spectators, in both countries, than you ever see in England, many wearing burkas. The vast majority of the crowd, filling in scorecards, following the game with close attention, are a million miles from being chauvinistic yobs. The Hyderabad match was more like a game between neighbouring villages than warring countries.

The vast transfer of population that took place with partition in 1947 means many Pakistanis have family roots in India, and vice-versa. Religion may divide them (though India has some 40 million Muslims), but they share centuries of history and culture.

Competition is passionate but for the mass of spectators it has a gentle, familial underside to it. Chauvinism, bitterness and war are the prerogatives of the politicians and a small minority of hoodlums - but they are usually enough of the latter to provoke trouble.

According to Indian journalists who have followed their side abroad, this kith-and-kin mood extends to the players. "Off the field there's a lot of bonding between the players," says one, "especially between Pakistanis and Indians from the north who share the same language. I'd say the relationship between the players is the best in cricket at the moment.

"Of course, on the field, it's different."

The commonest comparison for the Indo-Pak rivalry is with that between England and Australia, and, even though the latter countries are not actually murdering each other's citizens on a daily basis, there is a lot in it. The comparison can be extended further. Australia and Pakistan, despite having small populations, usually win. And after routs like Thursday's one-day international - Pakistan scored 219 for the loss of one wicket in 26.2 overs - Indians, like the English in similar circumstances, tend to shake their heads in despair.