Dr. Shashi Tharoor

India versus Pakistan is a contest between two countries, not two communities within India. It is not the Pentangular revived; India has never fielded an all-Hindu team, and even Islamic Pakistan these days cannot do without a Hindu leg-spinner. Coverage of these matches in communal terms is as reprehensible as covering them through military metaphors, a sin of which Indian and Pakistani journalists alike have been guilty. The tendency to see these matches as warfare by proxy is equally unfortunate. Cricket is a sport; a cricket team represents a country, it does not symbolize it. To ask cricket to bear a larger burden than any other national endeavour is palpably unfair