India are set to play a bilateral series with Pakistan after 5 years and the move to resume the bilateral ties is a welcome one. In today's era of cricket when there is no one dominating team like Australia of 2000s and West Indies of past, there are 4 or 5 very good teams with little separating the other one, it makes sense to play against every other opposition as much as possible to avoid a situation in the global tournament where you dont know what to expect from the other team.
The ties were frozen after the 2008 episode and though India continued to play the neigbhouring country in ICC tournaments, the participation in IPL and bilateral tournaments was frozen. And the resumption of the bilateral ties will give a chance to the next generation of India's players to know what it is playing against that team and what pressure really is. Its time the politics is separated from cricket when it comes to the games between this 2 countries. The political landscape between this 2 countries is hardly going to change, no matter what measures are being employed by respective governments, the element of mistrust and communication gap shall always persist. So why let the game of cricket suffer.
There have been some political voices opposing the move and most of them have come from the state of Maharashtra, but they hardly make any sense or hold any relevance in the interest of the game. Though there are no rheoterical statements from the right wing parties to dig the pitch or not let the players from that team step in Mumbai, there have been some opposition from cricketing players and they have been political. Kirti Azad is a well known BJP MP and his opposition is more of a political ritual, the opposition from Sunny Gavaskar is amusing. It hardly makes any sense to oppose the resumption of the cricketing relations between this 2 countries. Its an unsaid truth that the 2 countries shall never be friendly with each other. The relations shall never be "normal" or "warm" or "friendly" as long as the political setup in that country doesnt give up its obsession with anti India tirade. Having said that the players from both the countries shall benefit by playing with each other. Their game is going to improve and the team that learns more shall benefit in the longer run in international cricket.
Both teams in limited formats are young and very soon India shall have a young team in Test matches too and if this teams play test series once every 2-3 years then the game shall benefit. We hardly see any hard fought rivalries this days after the decline of Australia as a dominating team and India's batting prowess in last 2 overseas tours. So if India and Pakistan are able to resume their rivalries leaving out the political drama out of the game, then only the world of cricket shall benefit and any such move should always be welcome by the fraternity that wants the game of cricket to evolve and get better at all times in the present and in the future.
