India v Pakistan:
The timeless
tale of cricket's
greatest rivalry

‘The Greatest Rivalry’

Twenty-six years on from that BBC documentary, the world has changed markedly. Now, the story of Indo-Pak cricket has been retold not by the UK’s national broadcaster, but by a streaming service available in 192 countries.

The title of the newest take on the issue speaks of an attempt to play down toxicity. Rather than any mention of war, the three-part Netflix documentary series The Greatest Rivalry: India vs Pakistan.

Three-and-a-half years in the making, its release this month was timed with the Champions Trophy in mind. “People also release love stories around Valentine’s Day,” reasoned Chandradev Bhagat, the director, with some degree of irony.

The series does point out the obvious: that a cricket match between the neighbouring nations is rather a big deal. In its opening sequence, Virender Sehwag, the great India batsman, says: “An India-Pakistan match is more than a bat and ball game. It is much bigger than that.”

But it also makes a play of how cricket brings the two countries together, rather than divides.

At one point it focuses on an incident during a Test in Lahore in 2004, in which Anil Kumble, the Indian spinner, threw the ball at Inzamam-ul-Haq while the Pakistan batsman was at the crease.

While tempers did fray, the two players actively decided to walk off the field with arms around each other’s shoulders, to quell any additional nastiness.

Bhagat acknowledges that Netflix is not about to save relations between India and Pakistan. But he hopes the documentary series does at least give pause for reflection.

“It is a thought-provoker, and that is what we as filmmakers can do: throw up a point of view and let the decision-makers consider these things,” Bhagat said.

“It is obviously not up to us. It is up to the cricket boards. The cricket boards are driven by a fair degree of political sentiment. Society and cricket are interconnected. It is great to say politics should not be connected to sport, but unfortunately the two are connected.

“Decisions will be taken by governments, and they will only happen when governments want to do something like that. When the political environment is conducive, then I think this thing will happen.

“Everybody knows sport brings great joy, connects and builds nations. It can build a bridge. But it doesn’t go above everything else.”

Coincidentally, Bhagat also contributed to that BBC documentary, over a quarter of a century earlier. In the intervening time he, as well as many of the others involved in the creation of the Netflix series, had a number of years when he called the UAE home.

As such, he is aware that Dubai – or Sharjah and Abu Dhabi – is a solid substitute if the sides can’t play in each other’s backyard.

“It is still a good expression of the passion the cricketers have and fans have,” Bhagat said. “It is the next best thing to playing in each other’s countries. Dubai is neutral, but there is enough fanfare on each side.

“We start getting all worked up for the match. We are over emotional fans. We celebrate too hard, and we take our prayers too hard when we lose. Such is the nature of our fan base.”

Covering the long-standing feud

Chandresh Narayanan, another former Dubai resident, was the research lead on the Netflix documentary. The role was a labour of love, given that its primary focus was the 2004 India tour of Pakistan that he covered as reporter for Indian Express. It was also his first time outside of his home country.

“It was my first ever trip using my passport – and that, too, to Pakistan,” Narayanan said.

“If I tell anyone this, they usually don’t believe it. If you get a passport, you probably use it to go to the States or to the UK. My first trip was to Pakistan, and the second was to Bangladesh at the end of 2004. I had the most unique time of it.”

He had a 10 day wait in Delhi for his visa. “We had to go to the Pakistan High Commission, stand there for two hours, then we would be told it would be ready tomorrow,” Narayanan said.

“Always, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. The wait became longer and longer. When we finally got it, it was such a relief. The first visa I got in my passport was Pakistan.”

Through a colleague at his newspaper, he managed to get on the same Indian Airlines flight as the team themselves. It is not clear what was more nerve-racking for the cub reporter: dealing with star players like Sachin Tendulkar or Sourav Ganguly, or meeting a Pakistani person in the flesh.

“It was [my] first time talking face to face with the Indian cricketers who I later came to know one by one. Some of them hate me now,” Narayanan said.

“The moment I landed in Pakistan, the Indian team was mobbed outside the airport, there was so much security. Somehow, I got out.

“[Arriving at the hotel in Lahore] it was my first face to face interaction with a Pakistani. As an Indian growing up in India, you have been taught that a Pakistani is this or that. Now imagine: they are speaking a similar language to you, and you think, ‘Really? They like the same movies? They like the same TV shows? They are talking about our TV shows?’

“I was stunned. I remember asking one of the Pakistani reporters, ‘Hang on, you are talking about the same shows we have in India?’ It was the age of cable television, but it felt surreal. It was fantastic.”

Samiuddin had similar feelings. He had recently moved to Pakistan after studying in the UK. Between those studies and his years living in Saudi Arabia previously, he had at least come into contact with Indian people.

“I decided I was going to have to take some time off from my day job and go and cover this as it was the biggest thing that had happened,” he said. “It was massively exciting.

“When I met these young Indian journalists, I was like, ‘My God, this is a different world altogether.’”

He subsequently travelled to India for the return tour the following year. That trip included a 27-hour train journey between two of the one-day international venues.

“Everything was 100 times bigger than anything I was used to in Pakistan,” Samiuddin said. “It struck me that India was not just one country but many, many, many different countries being run as one.

He said there were some similarities, particularly between people in north India and parts of Pakistan, but that some of the larger cities were vastly different.

Samiuddin also contributed to the documentary and was struck by some of the issues it exposed.

“One of the things that really stood out to me was how bad the relations had been between the two countries in the build up to that,” he said.

“From the end of the century, when the Kargil War happened, and just before that, the nuclear tests happened in both countries, things weren’t great.

“Similar political forces were in play," he said of the politicial tensions in each nation at the time.

"And yet somehow there was still enough goodwill to say, ‘Hey, let’s have a cricket series.’ You look back now, and think it is nearly impossible."

Samiuddin said the relationship has worsened to the degree that he cannot see the two nations agreeing to have another cricket series in the next five or six years.

“The message from that series, cautiously, seemed to be that we think it’s better that India and Pakistan play each other.”

Narayanan is happy with the result of the project, even though he is aware it is unlikely to satisfy everyone.

“The documentary has evoked different kinds of emotions in both the countries,” Narayanan said.

“Initially, the Pakistanis thought, ‘Oh, Netflix India has put out a documentary, it is going to be jingoistic.’ Netflix can’t do that, it is a global platform.

“And Indians thought, ‘Oh, it’s just before the Champions Trophy, Netflix is going to push an agenda that India should have toured Pakistan.’ But the timing is coincidental.

“I don’t know whether the countries will come back together [because of it]. It could spark a conversation," he said. The matches tend to happen when relations between the two nations are better, he added.

“If both sides, at the highest level, want these teams to play, it will happen. Conversations at any other level might be good conversations, but might not lead to any kind of rapprochement.”