Top 10 current rivalries in sport
Sport ranks among the greatest of human creations. While all human pursuits that make use of imagination reflect, in one way or the other, the inconsistencies of life, it is in sport that we see the man’s fight with morality most poignantly captured.How else can sport aspire to reward its spectators with the vicarious thrill of success or for that matter the numbing taste of defeat but for the presence of rivalries that are so intense that the sporting arenas transform into microcosms of life itself.Let us now take a look at ten of the most intense rivalries across the sporting landscape today.
#1 India v/s Pakistan (Cricket)
Although ‘true’ fans of the sport and cricket boards of both nations go to unfathomable lengths to ensure that an India – Pakistan encounter remains nothing more than a strictly sporting affair, they invariably fail, almost on every occasion, in keeping it so.
Among the best examples of politics and off-field hostilities creeping into the cricket field is the famed India-Pakistan World Cup encounter in the 1999 at Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester. Against an atmosphere that was vitiated by the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan at Kargil, the two teams met and it did not take an the most astute observer to point out that the game’s importance far outweighed the team’s prospects of advancing in the tournament. India’s win in that memorable encounter was seen, by a significant chunk of the Indian populace, as a portentous sign, one which foretold India’s victory in the ‘real’ battle.
However, if one steps away from all the political hogwash that a match between India and Pakistan inevitably entails, the patron of the game would be bound to admit that it has produced some of the most riveting contests ever. The now historical Sharjah final match, the one with Javed Miandad scoring a six of the last ball or the famous India-Pakistan quarter-final at Bangalore in the 1996 World Cup, where a generally calm and composed Venkatesh Prasad gave vent to his fury and castled Aamir Sohail’s stumps to deliver one of India’s more memorable wins... the list is endless.