World Cup Cricket Fever

On The Road Blog

By Vineeta Gupta on February 26th, 2011
Category: Blog, South Asia

Lahore, Pakistan – “India is winning,” said the first person I saw after getting off the plane in Lahore. I had just landed after a tough flight from Delhi, and I didn’t quite understand what she meant. Earlier that day, our plane had been diverted to Multan after being unable to land in Lahore because of bad weather. The pilot struggled for about 20 minutes to avert a possible disaster. Shaken from the experience of hanging between life and death, we landed in Lahore after a short stay in Multan. Passengers agreed that the pilot’s expertise was the key factor that saved us all.

World Cup cricket is on, and it turned out that the comment about India winning referred to a cricket match: India was playing against South Africa. People in both India and Pakistan keenly follow the winning trajectory of the other country to see if they will end up playing against each other. Nothing is more engaging in both countries than a match between the two. Traffic comes to a standstill, and all attention is on the game.

In 1947, British India was separated into India and Pakistan, with a large Hindu population migrating to India from Pakistan and a large Muslim population migrating to Pakistan from India. It is considered the world’s largest population transfer in history. Pakistan was divided into East and West, and in 1971, East Pakistan separated from Pakistan to become Bangladesh, an independent state. India and Pakistan have remained in conflict over the disputed territory of Kashmir, fighting two wars, in 1947–48 and 1965, and relations between the two countries are tense. Bollywood films made in India, TV serial plays made in Pakistan, and cricket are some of the strongest nonpolitical connecting points for people in both countries.

I am excited to be in Pakistan, where GFC currently has five grantee partners. I grew up hearing great stories from my father about the vibrant city of Lahore, and about his childhood friends with whom he lost touch after the partition of India and Pakistan. While I have been to Pakistan before, this is my first visit to Lahore.