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You can have bombs, or cricket balls; not both!

When countries are at war, or as in the case of India, fighting a grim proxy war, the accepted practice is that you don't behave normally with your foe.

At the height of the Cold War, the US and the USSR had very few sporting encounters. The 1984 Moscow Olympics and the subsequent Los Angeles Olympics were in fact boycotted by an entire bloc of nations -- and there, the two sides had not once fired a single shot at each other.

But the two superpowers did what they did, because they believed that ideology, national interest, mattered more than a few gold medals and the rah-rahs of an admiring world.

True, in consequence, we missed out on some of the most spectacular contests of human excellence, the flipside being the last Olympic gold medal India won by default in 1984 -- but today, neither side is any the worse for the stand they took then.

In the subcontinent's case, we are not merely talking about playing cricket with a country which has imposed three wars on us. We are not merely talking about playing cricket with a country that is bleeding us dry in Kashmir. We are not merely talking about a country whose raison d'etre is India-baiting.

We are, instead, talking of playing cricket with a nation that intends to exploit that fact, the fact that we are willing to play ball with it, to tell the world that our loud protestations that it is interfering in our internal affairs, that it is inimical towards us, are a bunch of lies. If they weren't, how come we are playing cricket with it, how come we are having cultural exchanges with it? Sane nations don't behave this way, surely... is the implicit message Pakistan seeks to send the world.

So do we want to score a self-goal, or, since the topic is cricket, run ourselves out, do we?

I am deafened by the argument that it is bad to mix politics with sports. I concede the point. But here, is the question merely one of mixing the two? The issue, as I understand it, is that I am asked to sacrifice national interest, or at least subsume it, so that the two teams may play against each other.

Of course I agree that the magic when the two teams clash against each other is ineffable. The Ashes just don't come anywhere near this, for the simple reason that the history between the two contiguous nations from the subcontinent has been bloody. Today, I am told to substitute a cricketing encounter for a military one -- I believe it is called sublimation by mind-watchers. My question is, is it too much to ask for a little sacrifice, so that the nation drives home a point?

There are a lot of things I don't like about Balasaheb Thackeray, but on the issue of not playing cricket with the Pakistanis I am wholly in agreement with him. He knows who the nation's enemies are, and to a homespun politician like him, dissembling is not really necessary for him. He is no self-styled secularist, so there is no need for him to appeal to his votebank by pussyfooting on Pakistan's modus operandi to destabilise the Indian state.

All along, one has been told that the anti-India rhetoric of the Pakistani politicians did not translate into either public suspicion or paranoia towards India. All along, one has been told that the genuine desire of the Pakistani people is for peace and normalcy with India. Among the many illusions that were disabused on May 11 and 13, this must rank among the top. The mass hysteria that erupted across the border in the aftermath of the Indian nuclear tests, and the open jubilation on Pakistani streets following their own tit-for-tat nuclear explosions, showed clearly that there is a gulf between the two nations, which cricket is not going to bridge.

I am willing to overlook even this, willing to concede the demands from the pro-cricket lobby. But conditionally.

If, as the arguments from the other side seems to suggest, Pakistan is really not involved in messing up the situation for India in Indian Kashmir, if its involvement in insurgency here is a figment of popular imagination, let Pakistan come out and say/do certain things.

First, let Pakistan swear off any -- even putative -- aid and succour to militants in Kashmir. Let Nawaz Sharief announce that his country is shutting off all training camps for Kashmiri militants, that they will not fund or aid the rebels in any manner, and in fact, will help India in pursuing insurgents in his country.

Let the Pakistani prime minister also hand over those accused of engineering the Bombay blasts of 1993, who are living in luxury in his country, and declare that from now on, Pakistan will not offer asylum to anybody guilty of anti-India activities.

Let Pakistan announce its willingness to fence its border with India, which will make it easy for the armed forces to tackle cross-border crimes and the like.

But so long as Pakistan continues to aid and abet, overtly and covertly, anti-Indian activities from its soil, there is no necessity or need to have any interaction with them, least of all play cricket.