After Sunday’s match against India, the New Zealand cricket team and their families on Tuesday met His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his residence in McLeodganj, a small and quaint hill station with the snow-clad Dhauladhar range in the background, on the suburbs of Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh.

Dressed in traditional maroon robes, the Dalai Lama, the global face of the Tibetan exile movement, spent around an hour interacting with players and sharing notes, besides playfully tickling someone’s beard, or patting another gently on the cheek or nose, an expression of his genuine love for others.