Patriot Games

While sporting spectacles often try to paper over political fractures, the cancellation of the India-Pakistan clash at the World Championship of Legends (WCL) 2025 offers a rare and bracing dose of moral clarity. The match, billed as a nostalgic showdown between retired titans, was scrapped after former Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan chose not to pad up against Pakistan. His reason was simple and stirring: “Mera desh mere liye sab kuch hai.”

Other Indian players like Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan and Yusuf Pathan followed suit and the so-called “Legends” match was promptly cancelled.

Dhawan’s principled stance, taken in the grim aftermath of the April 22 Pahalgam massacre where Pakistan-sponsored terrorists slaughtered Indian civilians, was born of conscience, a refusal to play games in the face of barbarism.

At the heart of this rupture is Shahid Afridi, the former Pakistani captain turned professional provocateur. Afridi is no stranger to controversy. But even by his rancid standards, his posturing in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack had plumbed new depths of dishonour. His remarks accusing the Indian government of staging the attack and then blaming Pakistan were grotesque.

Afridi’s history of intolerance is well-documented, and not merely confined to his political outbursts. In a bizarre interview some years ago, he recalled with apparent pride how he once saw his young daughter mimicking a Hindu ritual after watching an Indian television serial and smashed the television set in a fit of righteous fury. That he recounted the episode as if it were a badge of honour speaks volumes about the bile that animates him.

Equally disturbing are allegations made by former Pakistani cricketer Danish Kaneria, a rare Hindu in the country’s cricketing history, who accused Afridi of relentless harassment by pressuring him to convert to Islam and treating him as an outcast in the dressing room.

These are not the acts of a sportsman but the tell-tale signs of a man drunk on majoritarian impunity, incapable of tolerance let alone celebrating it.

After India’s successful prosecution of Operation Sindoor, Afridi organised a ‘victory’ rally in Karachi to celebrate a conflict his side decisively lost. In a grotesque theatre of denial, sweets were distributed in Sindh and flag-waving crowds cheered what was in fact a national embarrassment. In Afridi’s fantasyland, even defeat is repackaged as glory.

What Dhawan and his compatriots have done is draw a red line. In an era where former athletes often morph into ambassadors of brand diplomacy, willing to trade patriotism for appearance fees, Dhawan’s choice to walk away without fanfare is quietly heroic. Unlike Afridi, who revels in playing the martyr on talk shows and Twitter feeds, Dhawan neither barked nor bit. He simply said no. That ‘no’ echoed louder than Afridi’s cacophony.

Matches played in the shadow of terror attacks are not exhibitions of peace but exercises in cognitive dissonance. Pretending that all is well in the name of the ‘gentleman’s game’ does no justice to the gentlemen killed in Pahalgam.