India and Pakistan gather around a cricket ground
SPORT FOR
PEACE (2/3) India and Pakistan, two countries in open or latent warfare for
nearly seventy years, met in February 2015 at the Cricket World Cup.
On February
15, 2015, one billion viewers watched the India-Pakistan match, one hundred
million more than for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics or the final
of the last World Cup.
Indifferent
to most sports that thrill the rest of humanity, India and Pakistan have indeed
a common passion for cricket, sport imported by the British colonizer, the time
when the two peoples were united in the same State, until the partition of
1947.
The main issue of this game was not
on the field but in the stands
In this
February match counting for the World Cup, the sporting logic was respected,
because India dominated its neighbor, which was the case during the six
meetings between the two teams between 1992 and 2015. Lean consolation,
Pakistan was avenged in the semi-finals by Australia, future winner of the
competition.
Still, the
main issue of this party was not on the field but in the stands, where
diplomats from the two rival countries exchanged polite smiles.
A few days
earlier, the prime ministers of these two neighboring and rival states had
resumed a dialogue interrupted again six months earlier, when the Pakistani
foreign minister had made an affront to the Indian authorities to meet during a
trip. in New Delhi, separatists from Kashmir.
This
province of India, where a high proportion of Muslims live, benefits from
Pakistani support. Boot noises are regularly heard on the borders between the two
countries, and skirmishes, cleverly orchestrated and then stifled, regularly
break out between Indian and Pakistani troops.

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