ICC World Cup 2023: India won, but Ahmedabad lost it

Since the time World Cup was announced, everyone was talking about the big game between India and Pakistan, a match the whole world wants to see.

Ahmedabad was buzzing with incredible excitement when I reached the city to attend the match.

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I have been one of the fortunate ones to watch every World Cup match between the two great rivals in the past 12 years (2011 in Mohali, 2015 in Adelaide, and 2019 in Manchester) and this time I was lucky once again to see the Ahmedabad game.

I reached the stadium by 11 am — four hours before the start of the game. And within two hours, it was almost a packed house. All this was perfect and I loved the excitement on every fan’s face.

But as the two captains went in for the toss, thunderous applause greeted Rohit Sharma, but Babar Azam faced a cacophony of boos. It was shocking.

Then there was utter silence in the packed 132,000-capacity stadium when Pakistan openers hit boundaries.

What astonished me more was when Babar reached his 50, there was hardly any applause even as he raised his bat to celebrate the milestone.

Every time India picked wickets, Chak De India, the iconic Bollywood song, was played. Fair enough. But they hardly played any song to motivate the Pakistani players.

This is a World Cup and India are the hosts and it’s appropriate that the opponents' music is played too and cheered.

It's a sport everybody loves and people have spent a fortune to be present to see the game.

Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur did not mince words in the post-match press conference.

"This seemed like a BCCI event and not an ICC event," he said.

I have been to this fabulous ground to watch the IPL finals twice and the DJ played the anthems of both teams. Yes, MS Dhoni gets more support because of this popularity but it's not one-sided. The other team too get the ovation.

Then why in a World Cup? Pakistan deserve to be treated as well as the other participating teams.

But after the game ended, it was good to see India's players meeting Pakistan players and shaking hands and hugging each other.

The silver lining was when Virat Kohli handed over his Indian national jersey to Babar. That was a great gesture.

The opinions expressed in the column belong solely to the author

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