Mr Curious has it spot on.
I have worked with a fair few Indians working in the UK, and day to day they are the same as anyone else. Many of them 'needed' to tell me their family was the richest in the area when we first met, and I often got to hear just how expensive any weddings were. Once I got past that approx twenty Indian families are ALL the single richest family, and all the weddings were very expensive its business as normal.
Once we get past cultural differences it's easy to see that some countries need to claim to be the best as a cultural thing and not as arrogance or big headed ness.
This exercise will have been good practice for all kinds of things, and I'm sure both sides gained experience and learned new tricks.
This almost reminds me of a parents evening at a primary school. After the event a whole bunch of parents are keen to tell others that their child is top of the class (often with 20 tops of class), whereas the children just carry on as normal and all play nicely.
