The rivalry between India and Pakistan is as bitter as it is sweet

Neighbours share such a complicated relationship that when they do play a game of cricket, there are few exchanges to compare it with.

Pakistan, left, and India have not played a bilateral series since December 2007 and politics has a lot to do with it. Munir uz Zaman / AFP
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As a rule, avoiding Indian and Pakistani news channels is not a bad way to prolong your health.

When they start screeching to each other, in celebration, in anger, in collaboration or accusation (but always screeching) not tuning in is an especially useful way to avoid some form of bodily damage. Yet circumstances conspired on Saturday night to put a joint broadcast of two leading channels either side of the border on the television screen.

At hand was yesterday's Asia Cup game between the two countries, their first meeting almost exactly a year after their last in Mohali.

On the Pakistan panel was one genuine heavy in Javed Miandad, and Shoaib Malik who presumably was three panellists in one: a former captain, a successful player against India, and the husband to India's Sania Mirza and thus, in TV logic, a leading authority on Indo-Pak affairs.

On the Indian side were the former fast bowler Atul Wassan and Arun Lal, a man made for loud TV.

As the discussion high-pitched its way here and there through random pre-game talking points, one stray but natural question sought to look beyond this game and possibly another later in the week.

Pakistan and India have not played a bilateral series since December 2007, but more accurately since the Mumbai attacks the following winter. When will bilateral ties resume asked the Pakistan anchor?

The question came from the right side. Pakistan has pushed and pushed for ties to be resumed and India has put up a typically bureaucratic barrier; typical in that nobody is sure who is doing the stonewalling, the government or the cricket board.

Last year the Indian prime minister seemed to have given the go-ahead yet nothing has come since (logic dictates that it must ultimately be a state-level hindrance).

In Pakistan there is increasing frustration. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has tried everything including repeated diplomatic efforts, but to nothing.

Now, the board chairman Zaka Ashraf, fed up, has said he will not push any further for a resumption.

The frustration is understandable, probably even justified.

Much of it is just the natural thirst to play India, still the contest fans on both sides want to see most (accounting for cyclical rivalries such as India's with Australia, or Pakistan's with the West Indies in the past).

Presently there is more urgency in Pakistan because their team has been on the rise and India on a downswing.

Above all, financially it is not just lucrative but absolutely vital for Pakistan, as the International Cricket Council's (ICC) Pakistan Task Team pointed out in their report last year.

The political climate too is, if not warm, then the least cold it has been since November 2008.

Little jabs of peace have been flung at each other. Trade ties have been strengthened. There is talk of visa restrictions being eased. Other sporting ties have not been cut. Why not begin again now?

Well, quite simply, because India clearly is not ready to and ultimately that must be respected.

Politics is part of it, of course it is, because it has to be with these two. The Mumbai attacks have not had full closure yet, like a stubborn scab refusing to be peeled off fully. It matters still.

In Pakistan it is sometimes overlooked that other countries do not react as they do to such violence. That is not a judgement, merely an observation on the condition of a people so inundated by such attacks; Pakistan moves on from such atrocities quicker than most, as commendable and necessary as that is if a little sad as well.

In a similar light, some in Pakistan cannot understand why every international team is unwilling to come. They cannot because they do not feel it safe and who's to say they are not right?

The political climate within India might not be helping either. The only people to have had a more chastening year than the Board of Control for Cricket in India is Congress, the party that leads the coalition in power.

A Pakistan tour is a political unknown, the reaction to which could go either way. It is not the kind of chance flailing governments like to take in a hurry.

And so, surprisingly, there was a response on the television show of considerable sense and it came even more surprisingly from the only fast bowler there.

There is no rush, Wassan argued; the air is becoming healthier, there is no need to rush into it. Let it come to a natural resumption. And when it does, treat it with the care it deserves, don't abuse it.

The last is the most important point. The history of contact between the two sides has the feel of an eating disorder; stuff yourselves for a while before forcing it all out and then starting all over again.

Extended periods of stark drought have been followed by a few years of heady, greedy pillage. Much more sensible to keep it special, so that it is treasured and not causing the kind of ennui and overfill as happened between 2003/04 and 2007/08 (and a few times before).

And who can say ultimately that they might not resume sooner rather than later?

Such is the illogic behind how things work here that the last time a detente emerged, it did so with a retired general (who almost sparked a nuclear conflict between the two countries just four years earlier) in charge in Pakistan and an Indian prime minister from a right-wing party generally considered hawkish in its stance to Pakistan.

It will happen again and – for a while at least – it will be unlike anything else in cricket.