A Wild Correlation

Do we remember the washed-out cricket match between Pakistan and India in Kandy, Sri Lanka? It was the Asia Cup in September 2023. Pakistan tore through India’s top order and was all set to chase a modest total before rain intervened. Before the match, Rohit Sharma had more or less admitted that India’s bowling lineup was no match for Pakistan’s.

It’s been downhill for Pakistan cricket ever since.

But it wasn’t just cricket. Every domain of the country—already in steady decline—went from bad to dramatically worse.

Oh, the correlation. That was the same time Israel unleashed its genocide upon Gaza.

Whatever feeble legitimacy nationalism once had died in Gaza, along with all the other fabrications of Western colonialism.

And what is international sports, if not a ritualistic performance before the gods of nationalism? Even before the game begins, players stand solemnly for the national anthem—much like the way Muslims stand in prayer before God.

Or perhaps it’s a false reassurance—clinging to our team’s victories to compensate for our own moral failures.

Or is it our guilt over those very failures, transmuted into rage over their unforgivable losses?

We are more passionate about cricket than the land of its creators. We are even described as following the game with religious fervor. It makes one wonder whether we have any other religion at all.

We bemoan our team for depriving our poor nation of the happiness we associate with cricket. But why is the happiness of a people—so desperate to leave their country, if they haven’t already left—so deeply tied to the success of its cricket team?

Overtly, we refuse to do anything meaningful for our brothers and sisters in Gaza. We have even stopped acknowledging their continued suffering. But at the core of our being, we feel the guilt. We recognize how we’ve abandoned them—their pain.

And so, the gradient of our downward descent steepened. Maybe, just maybe, what plagues us within finds manifestation in all the corruption outside. To be fair, our hypocrisy didn’t begin in October 2023. It was only unveiled.

Or whatever. These are wild correlations. The inner world has nothing to do with the outer world. Psychology has nothing to do with politics. Politics has nothing to do with cricket. Cricket has nothing to do with emotions. We are fragmented creatures, living in a fractured world—where nothing has anything to do with anything else.