That most British of games, cricket, has become the focus of the most heated attention in Southern Asia. Passions are particularly kindled when -- as often happens -- a tiny David vanquishes an established Goliath. PNS commentator Andrew Robinson, a freelance writer, worked and wrote in Bangladesh and India for three years.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -- Ethnic and religions battles for territory have raged for thousands of years in South Asia. But today, the biggest news is not India's latest military foray into Kashmir but cricket -- specifically, Bangladesh's victory over Pakistan in the World Cup Cricket series.

"This is a historic day for us. We have beaten Pakistan -- one of the best teams in the world," said Bangladesh team captain Aminul Islam, now a national hero. "I think we deserve a national holiday back home."

It was granted.

The victory ranks as one of most remarkable upsets in the history of the sport. Bangladesh developed a cricket team capable of top-level international competition only in the last year -- and just barely at that.

The English Cricket Board allowed two new teams -- Bangladesh and Scotland -- into this year's World Cup's pool, a decision that created its own wave of celebration throughout Bangladesh. And although the Bangladesh team lost badly to New Zealand, the West Indies and Australia, a close victory over Scotland last week saw thousands of supporters celebrating in the streets of Dhaka.

But Monday's win against Pakistan, World Cup champions in 1992 and looking unbeatable this year, was so extraordinary that many in Bangladesh speak of the victory as historic.

"It's as if we have won a second independence war against Pakistan," Zaidul Hasan, a student, one of thousands of revelers in Bangladesh's capital, told an Associated Press correspondent.

And so cricket, that most English of sports, has become a kind of sparring ground for political grudges.

Ever since the dissolution of the British Empire in mid-century, the former colonies have pursued the sport feverishly. One great irony of this year's World Cup -- a tournament of one-day matches which has taken place roughly every four years since 1975 -- is that England, which is hosting the series, failed to make the final six. Many analysts say interest in cricket is waning in England, and the lackluster performance in the World Cup will only further reduce the number of supporters.

But elsewhere, especially in South Asia, the game has taken on historical proportions. When Hindu fundamentalists uprooted wicket stumps in Bombay to protest the Pakistani team playing in India, the tension between was like that which followed the testing of nuclear weapons.

Here in New Zealand, a country itself slowly moving toward independence from the British Crown, nothing sparks pride more than defeating the British cricket team. And the commonwealth's protest against apartheid in South Africa included the banning its cricket team from international competition

Small, politically insignificant countries such as the West Indies and Sri Lanka have taken to the cricket pitch and trounced much larger nations -- with Sri Lanka surprising everyone by winning the last World Cup in 1996. But even the West Indies and Sri Lanka are giants in cricket compared to Bangladesh.

So unthinkable is the Bangladesh victory over Pakistan, so overwhelming the odds, that many critics are sure to argue the match was fixed.

Be that as it may, the vast political repercussions of the game are indisputable. On the eighth of June, no matter what the situation in Kashmir, most South Asians will be watching what happens in Manchester, England, where India plays Pakistan in the final-six round of the World Cup.

And that is where history is just as likely to be made.