That spirit is fading. What remains is cricket weighed down by our national anxieties, when in truth it should have been the one space to remind us of our better selves.

India, too, shows how politics bleeds into sport. Under Modi, cricket has become an outlet for hyper-nationalism, where swagger often masks insecurity. Yet there was a time when Indian cricket gave us Dhoni’s composure or Kohli’s grace, when the game was allowed to breathe beyond politics.