I feel bound to take issue with Peter Oborne:
In England we have long regarded our Ashes encounters with Australia as embodying the biggest cricketing rivalry in the world. We deceive ourselves. India versus Pakistan is now the most meaningful and tremendous sporting contest...
Compared to the pulsating, passionate, primordial struggle that will today [now yesterday - NG] convulse all of India and Pakistan, the Ashes, it has to be admitted, counts for relatively little.
Peter confuses two things: the fierceness of the rivalry and the quality of the contest. Read on, and you'll see that to validate his judgement he cites various facts in favour of the India-Pakistan rivalry that one could reasonably call excesses: losers facing professional disgrace and social ostracism, unable to return home for fear of physical attack; effigies burnt in the street and police protection required; sour disappointment in defeat, including suicides; mob fury; etc. I would have thought it spoke in support of the Ashes rivalry that, intense and passionate as it is, it usually stays within the bounds of friendly contestation - with the odd exception here and there, such as in 1932-33. Think of it: going on 130 years of a battle that both sides have cared about more than anything else in cricket, renewed every couple of years except during wartime, informed by long tradition - and mostly kept within the bounds of mutual friendship. I'd say that was both 'meaningful and tremendous'.
In the end Peter gets round to acknowledging that 'there is a surprising amount of good humour between rival fans when the sides [India and Pakistan] meet'. And the players, he also says, 'tend to get on very well'. But by then he seems to have forgotten his own opening words. (Thanks: RB.)
