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NZ Herald
5 days ago
- Sport
- NZ Herald
The greatest rivalries in sport
The story of cricket between Pakistan and India is the story of these two mighty nations writ large. From hopelessly deadlocked test series, to era-defining World Cup clashes, the rivalry has had it all and sometimes even a bit more. Wrote Peter Oborne in the brilliant Wounded Tiger - A History of Cricket in Pakistan: 'It was becoming evident that tests between Pakistan and India had developed a unique sensibility. Those who were normal became slightly mad. Those who were already troubled were temporarily blinded with a kind of insanity.' One of the curiosities of this rivalry is that it is comparatively new. The Roses Match between Lancashire and Yorkshire was first played in 1855; India and Pakistan did not meet until close to 100 years later. There was a good reason for that: Pakistan did not exist. It is, in fact, the difficult birth of that country that gives the rivalry such piquancy. The history of British Raj — modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar — is long and complicated, but the critical element for this rivalry is that when India gained independence from Great Britain in 1947, Lord Mountbatten, the Queen's cousin and last viceroy of India, determined that the formation of a separate Muslim state was the most expedient way to avoid civil war. Known forever as 'Partition', crude lines were drawn on a map and Pakistan was born creating, in the stroke of a pen, millions upon millions of religious refugees. The violence was extraordinary as many of these refugees attempted to migrate, with at least one million deaths reported. From the chaos emerged two distinct countries (actually, three when you consider that East Pakistan fought for and gained independence in 1971, becoming Bangladesh) — sworn enemies who fight over disputed regions and worship different prophets, yet remain so culturally connected. Nowhere is that cultural connection more apparent than in cricket. By at least one account, cricket was first played at Cambay (near Ahmedabad) in 1721. It became a beguiling way for East India Company employees to befriend wary locals. Cricket clubs sprang up in all the major centres. In India it is often said that the two biggest nation-builders were the railways and cricket. Pakistan was admitted to the Imperial Cricket Conference (as the ICC was then known) in 1952 and a tour to India was scheduled for that year. The squad would include four who had previously played for India including captain Abdul Kardar, the Father of Pakistan Cricket. In the fragile post-Partition days, cricket was seen as both a potential peacemaker and a way for each side of the divide to demonstrate their sporting superiority. Pretty soon it became evident that the latter part of that equation was most pressing. That first tour would set the template for much of what was to follow over the next 30 years of intermittent contact. The first two tests were split, with the crowd in Lucknow making it very clear what they thought about the local side losing to the upstarts. India would save face by winning the next test… and that would be the last positive result either way in this fixture for 26 years. Yes, you read that right. Both teams became so terrified of losing the rivalry became infamous for 'petrifyingly dull' cricket as Oborne described it. Diplomatic incidents, such as Kardar offending the Indian delegation during the after-match formalities in 1952, were more spicy than any of the on-field action. Between that third test of the inaugural series in India and the second test at Lahore on India's 1978 tour to Pakistan, they squared off in 13 tests and drew them all. There was a little flurry of results following that, including a 3-0 Pakistan win when India toured for a six-test series in 1982-83, but there followed another dry patch, with just one positive result in the next 17, which also included a cancelled test in 1984 following the assassination of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. In December, 2007, Pakistan and India met at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. India batted first and posted 626 on the shoulders of Sourav Ganguly's 239. Pakistan replied with 537, Misbah-ul-Haq starring with an unbeaten 133. The match petered out to an inevitable draw. And that was all she wrote. In November of the following year, 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamist militant organisation, carried out 12 shooting and bombing attacks over four days across iconic locations in Mumbai, including the Taj Hotel and Leopold Cafe, killing 166 innocents. In 2009, a bus carrying the Sri Lankan team in Lahore was attacked, with six police and two civilians killed. India has refused to entertain the idea of touring Pakistan since (a stance graphically illustrated during this year's ICC Champions Trophy ostensibly hosted by Pakistan, although India played all their games, including the final, in Dubai), and test cricket between the two has ceased. All told, the most heated rivalry in cricket has seen just 59 tests in the 78 years of Pakistan's existence. Unless the cricket gods contrive to pit them in a World Test Championship final on neutral soil, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where they play each other again anytime soon in the red-ball format. This was a rivalry that needed limited overs cricket like a fire needs oxygen. It was one-dayers that reignited the rivalry and T20 cricket that reshaped it for the next generations. The modern rivalry can be telescoped into two epic matches. The initial flashpoint was Sharjah, 1986, in the little-remembered, unless you're a Pakistani, Austral-Asia Cup. These types of tournaments in Sharjah would later become a hotbed of match-fixing, but in the early days the Emirate was described by the New Indian Express as cricket's 'El Dorado'. Sheikh Abdul Rahman Bukhatir, an Arab schooled in Pakistan, fell in love with the game and saw an opportunity to build events around the Indo-Pak rivalry. In this tournament they met in the final in front of a packed house of mostly expat labourers in the oil industry. India scored 245, considered a big total in those days, with their top three of Kris Srikkanth, Sunil Gavaskar and Dilip Vengsarkar all passing 50. The Pakistan chase faltered badly, and when their talisman Imran Khan was the sixth man out at 209 with the overs fast ticking away, the game was as good as gone. The bloke at the other end, however, had other ideas. Javed Miandad, the moustachioed and self-styled street fighter from Karachi, had an eye for drama. Somehow he conjured up a century and found himself on strike with four needed to win off the final Chetan Sharma delivery. Sharma went for the yorker and instead dealt a knee-high full toss that Miandad put into the stands. Cue, mayhem. When Miandad is asked to recall the match, which is often (it was the subject of a documentary in Pakistan), he makes no attempt to understate his genius. 'I always prayed that I would do something big. I used to tell myself, even if I die in the field, I don't care. It's like a soldier dying on duty. It is shahadat (martyrdom). That innings was like a gift to me. I didn't play cricket like that, ever. That match, it was like a film. When I dream, it was like a film whose story has been written and now the film is being made… This is a gift. To describe it is impossible. This was a gift from God.' Pakistan fans during the 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup between India and Pakistan. Photo / Photosport Pakistanis describe this match as the starting point of their dominance that would end with the World Cup title in 1992, a title that should have ended in the semifinals when New Zealand dominated for all but the final 15 of the 100 overs, when a young Inzamam-ul-Haq combined with that man again, Miandad, to break the hearts of the home team. If Sharjah was important for Pakistan, then another clash between the two reshaped the entire sport. The stage was The Wanderers, Johannesburg, and the occasion was the final of the inaugural World T20 — The Match That Changed Cricket Forever. To that point, T20's place in cricket's portfolio was unclear. In particular India, who, with a burgeoning, TV-buying middle class were rapidly emerging as the game's financial powerhouse, seemed nonplussed by the format. On this day, however, the country was gripped as they successfully defended a middling 157. With six runs needed off four balls and just one wicket left, Pakistan's Misbah attempted a scoop, the catch was taken and the touchpaper was lit. Unlike Miandad's hyperbole following Sharjah, the impact of this final is impossible to overstate. Within a year, Brendon McCullum was electrifying the Bangalore crowd with 158 not out in the inaugural Indian Premier League match and cricket has never been the same since. It has also changed the dynamics of the rivalry. Indian cricket's board of control, the BCCI, has no financial imperative to play Pakistan. It owns the IPL, which in less than 20 years has established itself as one of the world's richest sports leagues. The ICC, the global game's governing body, on the other hand needs the rivalry to help sell the media and sponsorship packages to their showpiece tournaments (about 80% of the ICC's revenue comes from the Indian market), because advertisers love nothing better than the prospect of hundreds of millions of eyeballs fixed on them when these two nations meet. To an extent, the rivalry has been taken outside the continent. The South Asian diaspora fuels it. One report stated there were two million applications for 17,000 available tickets to a World T20 clash between the two teams in Long Island last year. Where once there was a dark side to it, whether it was corruption or outbreaks of violence following defeats, nowadays the scarcity means it is usually a good-natured celebration of the sport. This is of course still a political element that hangs over every exchange between those countries, but if anything cricket has become a way to celebrate their shared culture, rather than an exacerbation of their differences. It's still a happening though, the biggest, most valuable happening in cricket. – Words by Dylan Cleaver
News18
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
Kareena Kapoor Clicks 'Very Busy' Saif Ali Khan Doing THIS On Their London Holiday
Last Updated: Kareena Kapoor Khan shared glimpses from London with Saif Ali Khan. The celebrity couple, along with their kids, are on a holiday. Kareena Kapoor Khan, a day after taking a dig at Prada by flexing her Kolhapuri-style chappals, has posted new photos from her London holiday. The actor, who loves the British countryside as a holiday destination with her family, has yet again posted glimpses from their outing. One of which included a dapper photo of her husband, Saif Ali Khan. Taking to her Instagram story, Kareena Kapoor first posted a glimpse of 'her things", which included her sunglasses, a water ball which probably belonged to her sons Taimur and Jeh and a jute tote bag with her initials 'KKK' inscribed on it. The following pictures was that of her 'very busy" husband, Saif, engrossed in a book. His holiday outfit, comprising a pale blue shirt and orange shorts, screamed goals! Take a look: The year 2025 began with a lot of challenges for Saif, Kareena and their families after the latter was stabbed by an intruder inside their house in Mumbai. Following this, Saif's claim to a sprawling Rs 15,000 crore ancestral estate in Bhopal has hit a major legal setback. The Madhya Pradesh High Court has quashed a decades-old ruling that had earlier validated the Pataudi family's ownership of the royal properties inherited from the Nawab of Bhopal. The decision has reignited a complex legal battle rooted in princely succession laws, post-Partition migration, and the controversial Enemy Property Act. Kareena Kapoor stays connected with her fans on social media, sharing glimpses of her family life. Professionally, she is preparing for her upcoming film, Daayra, with Malayalam star Prithviraj Sukumaran. Directed by Meghna Gulzar, the project explores dark themes of crime and justice and is currently in pre-production. The script is co-written by Meghna, Yash Keswani, and Sima Agarwal. She was last seen in Singham Again. As for Saif Ali Khan, the actor was last seen in Netflix film, Jewel Thief. Prior to this, he played the antagonist in Jr NTR-starrer Devara: Part 1. While his next project has yet to be announced officially, rumours are rife that Saif is teaming up with Akshay Kumar after 17 years, for a thriller directed by Priyadarshan. The film is reportedly titled Haiwaan, meaning 'beast' in English.
India.com
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- India.com
This man used to sell sweets at shop, was given a big break by Madhubala, became Bollywood's famous...., he was...
Born on September 6, 1929, in pre-partition Lahore, Yash Johar grew up managing the family sweet shop post-Partition in Delhi. 'You just wanted your stomachs to be full,' he recalled of his modest upbringing. With nine siblings depending on whoever mattered most, his mother recognised his restlessness and supported his move to Mumbai to pursue his passion. Snapping a star into stardom In 1950, young Yash began working as a photographer for a news agency. His moment came on the set of Mughal-e-Azam, when Madhubala, charmed by his fluent English and confidence, permitted him to photograph her—and even gave him a personal tour of the set. This encounter opened the doors to the filmmaking world. Rising through the studio ranks Yash honed his craft at Sunil Dutt's Ajanta Arts in the early 1950s, assisting on films like Mujhe Jeene Do and Yeh Raste Hain Pyaar Ke. He then moved to Navketan Films, producing classics like Guide (1965), Jewel Thief, Prem Pujari, and Hare Rama Hare Krishna. His success with Guide cemented his place in the industry. Dharma is born In 1976, Johar fulfilled his largest cinematic ambition: founding Dharma Productions. Named to reflect his spiritual grounding, Dharma released its first hit, Dostana (1980), starring Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha, and Zeenat Aman. Although subsequent releases like Duniya, Agnipath, and Gumrah were moderate performers, Johar's lavish sets and emotive storytelling carved a unique niche. Legacy forged with his son Yash's true masterpiece was the dynasty he built with his son, Karan Johar. Together, they crafted blockbusters—Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), and Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003). The latter, Yash's final film, remains a cultural touchstone celebrated for its depth, values, and emotional resonance. A personal life as dramatic as his films In 1971, Yash married Heera Johar, sister of BR and Yash Chopra, legendary filmmakers. A story often told is how he proposed to her in front of icons like Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, and Raj Kapoor. Yash passed away on June 26, 2004, at 74, after battling cancer and a chest infection. Under Karan's leadership, Dharma Productions ascended to its place as one of Bollywood's major powerhouses.
India Gazette
19-06-2025
- Politics
- India Gazette
Pakistan treats muhajirs as enemies, Not citizens; Altaf Hussain Demands UN-backed freedom
London [UK], June 19 (ANI): Exiled MQM founder Altaf Hussain has called on the United Nations to recognise the Muhajirs' right to self-determination. Citing decades of systemic discrimination, he urged the international community to take action against what he described as 'state-sponsored apartheid' in Pakistan. 'The sacrifices of our forefathers created Pakistan, yet today the very architects of this nation, the Muhajirs, are treated as outsiders in their homeland,' Hussain declared. He described how Muhajirs, migrants from post-Partition India who settled in urban Sindh, face exclusion from education, employment, and basic civil rights. Referencing the UN Charter, he demanded the same right to political freedom that is guaranteed to all peoples under international law. He recounted historical flashpoints, from the 1964 violence against Fatima Jinnah's supporters to the 1972 language riots and the imposition of rural-urban quotas, as proof of deliberate marginalisation. 'Why are military operations only ever launched in Karachi or Balochistan, not Punjab?' he asked, accusing Pakistan's military of targeting Muhajir strongholds, killing activists, enforcing media blackouts, and dismantling MQM's political base. Rejecting the label of 'ethnic separatist,' Hussain emphasised MQM's inclusive stance: 'We have stood by Baloch, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Kashmiris, Hazaras -- every persecuted group. MQM never propagated hate; we stood for inclusion and human dignity.' He called the 2016 Nine Zero raid 'state barbarism' and condemned the branding of MQM as a terrorist organisation without due process. Urging Muhajir activists to submit reports of abuse to the UN, he framed documentation as the 'only peaceful and lawful path forward.' Hussain highlighted a series of pivotal events in Pakistan's history that, he claimed, demonstrate the enduring oppression of the Muhajir community, including the state-backed violence against Fatima Jinnah's supporters in 1964, the enforcement of the 1972 language bill in Sindh, and the implementation of a biased rural-urban quota system during Bhutto's rule. According to him, these measures were deliberately designed to suppress Muhajir identity and eliminate their influence in the country's political sphere. Hussain urged the UN, human rights groups, and democratic nations to act against what he described as arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, and the systemic marginalisation of Muhajirs. He ended with a firm but conciliatory appeal: 'We don't seek war. We seek dignity. But we shall never surrender our identity or our right to exist with dignity.' (ANI)
India Today
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
From the India Today archives (2011)
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated June 20, 2011)"As I begin to paint, hold the sky in your hands; as the stretch of my canvas is unknown to me."—M.F. Husain With the death of Maqbool Fida Husain in a London hospital on the morning of June 9, India has not only lost her most iconic contemporary artist but also perhaps one of the last living symbols of the very idea of her modern, secular and multicultural nationalism. Born in 1915 at the temple town of Pandharpur in Maharashtra, Husain came from a lower middle class Sulemani Muslim family and rose through the ranks to become India's most famous painter of people, places and a visual artist-especially a mid-20th century modernist painter-Husain was precariously perched on the crest of a nascent and evolving national consciousness. In the post-Partition era, when he first burst on the Indian art scene, Husain became a much celebrated symbol patronised by the Nehruvian state looking to create modernist role models. Yet, that very celebrity made him and his works vulnerable to be hijacked, misrepresented and reviled three decades later by a semi-literate cabal claiming to represent the collective voice of a largely silent Hindu majority. In fact, the torrid love affair between Husain and 'modern secular' India and their eventual dismaying disengagement makes for a civilisational sociologist Veena Das remarks, this "impossible love" had an inherent fragility because the idol, the image and the word are all strongly contested entities. It is also further complicated by the illicit intimacy between history and the 'perception of history' in post-colonial imaginations. The tantalising and tragic relationship-between a nation's notion of the self and Husain's visualisation of it in his art practice-became the vexed terrain over which competing political alignments fought their proxy wars for a good two decades before it eventually led to Husain's self-imposed exile from India in 2006. Four years later, he accepted Qatari nationality, spending his time between Dubai, London and Husain was educated in the streets of Indore, a madrassa in Baroda, the Indore School of Arts and very briefly the J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai. He was an immensely talented and intelligent man with an enormous curiosity about the world who learnt effortlessly from life and people. He arrived in what was then Bombay in the early 1930s, penniless but bursting with enthusiasm and energy, traits that he retained all through his first started out by walking the streets of Bombay offering to paint portraits of people who could afford to pay him Rs 25. There were not too many commissions but some of these early portraits still survive. In 2008 in London, I saw a portrait Husain had done of Lord Ghulam Noon's elder brother in a Bhendi Bazaar sweet shop. Soon, he moved to painting cinema hoardings, first for V. Shantaram's Prabhat Studios and later for New perched high on bamboo scaffolding, Husain learnt to be able to concentrate amid the noise and chaos of the street below. He used to paint 40 foot hoardings for four annas a foot under the blazing sun in Mumbai for many years. From painting hoardings, he progressed to designing toys and painting children's furniture for Rs 300 a month. "But even at that time I knew I would be an artist one day," he used to say, adding, "there was a time when I painted furniture by day and my own art by night. I painted non-stop." Cinema held a life-long fascination for Husain and decades later, he went on to make several much-talked about films. Of these Through the Eyes of a Painter (1967) won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival but the most well-known is Gaja Gamini (2000) that featured Madhuri Dixit as his muse. In 2004 he made the semi-autobiographical Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities with Tabu in the lead role which ran into trouble with Muslim life started to change radically around the time of Independence. Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002), the prodigious enfant terrible of Indian art, spotted Husain's talent by chance and immediately included him in his Progressive Artists Group (PAG) in 1947. Husain's work was noticed right from that first showing and with the encouragement of Rudi von Leyden, the German Jewish art critic, he held his first one-man show in Mumbai in 1950. With prices ranging from Rs 50 to Rs 300, the exhibition sold out. As Husain told me with a chuckle, "I was a best seller right from start."advertisementWhat differentiates Husain from his Progressive contemporaries is his deeply rooted 'Indianness' and his celebration of Indian life and people. While his contemporaries were busily assimilating European art from Byzantium downwards, Husain sought inspiration in temple sculptures (Mathura and Khajuraho), Pahari miniature paintings and Indian folk the mid-1950s Husain got national recognition with two very seminal canvases 'Zameen' and 'Between the Spider and the Lamp'. 'Zameen' was inspired by Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zameen (1955) but instead of bemoaning rural poverty and indebtedness, it presents a symbolic celebration of life in rural India with a vibrancy that had never been seen before. "I realised one did not have to paint like Europeans to be modern," he maintained. Nor did he, at any time, understand the angst of existentialism."Alienation as a concept is alien to my nature," he would joke. The next year he painted the more enigmatic 'Between the Spider and the Lamp'. This painting, considered by cognoscenti to be his best of all time, features five women reminiscent of ancient Indian sculpture with an oil lamp hanging from the top of canvas and some unintelligible words in a script that looks like ancient Brahmi, Magadhi or some long forgotten dialect. From the hand of one woman, painted as if frozen in a mudra, hangs a large spider by its thread. Some critics have suggested the women were the pancha kanyas (Ahalya, Kunti, Draupadi, Tara, Mandodari) of Hindu mythology. When this painting was shown, despite the ripples it created, no one came forth to buy it for Rs 800. It now hangs at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, on loan from the Husain became a living icon of Hindu-Muslim, gangajamni culture, his art acquired a quintessentially Indian form and content while being global in its relevance and appeal. Moreover, Husain invariably brought relevance to his paintings by making them topical. He was ever ready with the 'image of the day' whether it entailed painting the 'Man on the Moon' in 1969 or Indira Gandhi as Durga after the Bangladesh war in modern Indian art gained wider acceptance through the 1970s and 1980s, Husain was steadily scaling up his prices and using the media to create hype around his colourful persona and his escapades. "Life without drama is too drab," he used to say. Detractors screamed commercialisation and friends frowned in exasperation; but Husain insisted that "the fiscal worth of a painting is in the eyes of the buyer". And buyers came in Badri Vishal Pitti, the Hyderabad businessman for whom he painted 150 paintings, to Chester Herwitz, a handbag tycoon from Boston, who bought up anything that Husain produced through the 1970s. Two decades later, Kolkata industrialist G.S. Srivastava struck a deal for 124 Husain paintings for Rs 100 crore; not for love of art but as good investment. Indian art was appreciating at a higher rate than most stocks and brand Husain was now Husain Inc. After his emigration from India, Sheikha Mozah of Qatar was his last great all his fame and wealth, Husain was personally untouched by both. He could be as comfortable in a dhaba as in a five-star hotel relishing an expensive meal. He stopped wearing footwear as a tribute to the Hindi poet Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh in 1974 and he used to walk barefoot into the most exclusive and august gatherings as well as clubs the world epic saga is ever perfect. And Husain had more than his share of controversies and brickbats. However, it is in posterity that Husain's art and persona will get a truer reckoning. Perhaps the best tribute the Indian state could give would be to set up a museum devoted to the life and art of this most talented son of the to India Today Magazine
