Sunday’s Asia Cup 2025 Super Four clash in Dubai should have been measured in runs and wickets. Instead, it was measured in gestures: Haris Rauf’s fighter-jet mimicry and his ‘6-0’ flash; Sahibzada Farhan’s gun-like bat celebration. India’s openers, Shubman Gill and Abhishek Sharma, put together a blistering 105-run start, and India chased 172 with authority. But the conversation after the match pivoted away from cricket and toward a spectacle of political theatre on the boundary ropes.

This was not ordinary sledging. It was a deliberate performance, a replay of state narratives, broadcast to millions. When an international athlete uses a televised platform to signal disputed military claims or to enact symbols of violence, sport becomes a megaphone for politics. That is corrosive, and th

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