Ever since the Pulwama attack martyred more than 40 of our CRPF soldiers, the nation has demanded one thing in unison: a tough lesson to be taught to the Pakistani perpetrators.
Despite all their efforts to mislead the Indians like before, the country finds itself virtually isolated on the international stage. Not only is their cross border trade brought to an abrupt halt, the Pakistani artistes have also been slapped with a permanent ban by the Indian cine associations.
The social boycott has now found its way to the field of sports. The agitated masses are now calling for an absolute boycott of Pakistan, especially in the forthcoming ICC Cricket World Cup. The World Cup begins in the United Kingdom on May 30. While some are against it, probably reminding themselves of the 1974 Davis Cup finals, where India lost the final on almost identical grounds, other sportspeople like Saurav Ganguly are vociferously backing the demand of absolute boycott.
However, one man has a rather different take on this topic. Famous cricketer Sachin Tendulkar is not in favor of such boycott, saying that it would give away unnecessary points to the country. He tweeted, “India has always come up trumps against Pakistan in the ICC World Cup. Time to beat them once again. Would personally hate to give them two points and help them in the tournament. Having said that, for me India always comes first, so whatever my country decides, I will back that decision with all my heart.”
— Sachin Tendulkar (@sachin_rt) February 22, 2019
While the likes of Harbhajan Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal have called for complete cricketing boycott of Pakistan, Gavaskar on Thursday said India will be the loser if they decide to not play against the country on June 16. “Who wins if India decide against playing Pakistan in the World Cup? And I am not even talking about the semis and the finals. Who wins? Pakistan win because they get two points,” Gavaskar had told ‘India Today’. He continued, “India have so far beaten Pakistan every time in a World Cup, so we are actually conceding two points when by beating Pakistan, we could make sure that they don’t advance in the competition.”
Idealistically, this might sound reasonable, but given the current situation wherein Pakistan has virtually initiated a war with the nation, this is far from reasonable. Though Sachin Tendulkar’s views are nothing compared to the level of Navjot Singh Sidhu, he made these comments in an extremely bad taste. Are those two points so valuable that we’re ready to forget the terrorist attack on the martyrs of Pulwama?
Moreover, one of the comments made by Sachin Tendulkar in support of his argument is quite feeble. According to him, since we’ve never lost against Pakistan at the ICC World Cup, we should play them this time as well. On that logic, we’ve also never lost a war against Pakistan. But we can’t resort to that now, can we?
To be honest, this time Sachin Tendulkar has missed the mark with his disappointing remarks. The issue is not to defeat Pakistan in a game, the issue is to defeat them as a nation. The idea is to shun them on every front, be it entertainment, trade or sports. We need to remind Pakistan that they cannot get away with their cowardly acts this time. We hope the legendary batsman can see the crux behind the boycott demand soon enough.