‘Khel hi nahin dil bhi jeetiye’ is the message that Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee gave the Indian team when he met them just before they left for the airport to board a flight to Lahore. It’s a message that will be whole-heartedly supported by all those who love peace and wish for good neighborly relations between India and all its neighbors.

It’s a moving message and it tells the world that the Indian prime minister is sincere in the hand of friendship that he has proffered to the Pakistanis. It also tells everybody that its not just a cricket tour but a lot more and on the success of the tour will depend to a great extent the future course of relations with Pakistan. Any untoward incident on and off the field is likely to put the normalizing of relations in some jeopardy.

Do sporting teams win hearts? Yes, by the manner of their play and with it the joy they give to the lovers of the sport is immense and there have been fans of players who are not from the same nationality as the player. But when a country plays another, there’s no doubt that the home country will feel upset if it loses to the visiting team, no matter how brilliant their game has been and how attractively they may have played.

The easier way to win hearts is to play superbly yet not win. In cricket, the one supreme example is the West Indies team of 1960-61 that toured Australia and lost the series 2-1 with the first ever tied Test to boot and were given a ticker-tape farewell by the Australians who lined the streets of Melbourne spontaneously to bid them a safe journey home. No other team in any other sport comes to mind which has had such an experience, but don’t forget that that West Indies team lost.

What Vajpayee meant was that the Indians should play the game in the right spirit and win the Pakistanis over with their demeanor on and off the field. It’s a wonderful, moving sentiment and hopefully the Indians will respect it.

The series has been billed as the Friendship Series and the Goodwill Series but already the captain of the Indian team has said that he doesn’t believe in goodwill cricket but aims to play winning cricket. He will no doubt find that as the tour goes on and there is the odd tense moment, his comment that he doesn’t believe in goodwill will be brought out over and over again, never mind that what he meant wasn’t how it came out in the headlines the next day.

Its pretty much the same with the ‘chokers’ tag that has been tagged onto them though what was meant was that they choked against Australia just like the South Africans do. The Proteas, however, don’t choke against anybody else nor does the Indian team and there is no shame in losing to the world champions. Why, the Australian teams of the 80s used to choke against the then No. 1 team West Indies before they found the winning formula themselves. But then, that’s the way the world works nowadays to get their headlines.

Irrespective of the way they have begun their tour with a loss to Pakistan ‘A’, if there is a team that can beat the Pakistan team in their own den, it is this Indian team. Certainly in the limited-overs matches, they start as the favorites with the strong batting line-up that they have, and though the bowlers have struggled as they did on good batting pitches in the recent seasons, its not going to be easy to overhaul 300 runs every time for the opposition. That the main batsmen have all shown that they haven’t lost the form of Australia bodes well for the team and the pitches in Pakistan have always been good for batting.

The Indians will no doubt miss Kumble for he is a cricketer who is always striving to be better than he was in the previous game. It is a trait shared by Rahul Dravid who is also not one to rest on his laurels. Dravid’s comments that he was looking forward to seeing the ruins of Mohenjodaro and Harappa show that his vision is not restricted and that’s why he has always seen the bigger picture.

He will be the key player as he has been now for the last three years. On his solidity, the rest of the strokeplayers depend to give them the feeling of security, so make no mistake, it’s he that Shoaib and company are worried about more than anyone else, for with the others there’s always a chance. With Dravid, once he is in, its for bed, breakfast and room service lunch, tea and dinner.

The first game is invariably the one that sets the trend for the rest of the series especially if the home team wins, so the Indians have to put in that extra effort straightaway. It’s hard to separate the two teams.

The strength of one can be the weakness of the other and at the end of the day, its the mental aspect that as always will decide who comes out trumps.

Truly as it is said, when the going gets tough the tough get going. We will soon see who the tough guys are.