Death of a Rivalry?

THERE IS A GREAT TALE, PERHAPS APOCRYPHAL, ABOUT A question once posed to Inzamam-ul-Haq, the mighty Pakistan batsman of yore known for his witty oneliners during his tenure as national captain. It goes something like this: While facing a clutch of reporters on the sidelines of a match, Inzi was asked repeatedly about the performance of a certain player who had let his team down. Inzi leaned into a dictaphone pointed at his face and slowly said: “When he didn’t perform at all, what can I say about his performance?”

Today, if Inzamam was asked about the performance of Pakistan cricket, especially against India in the last decade or so, he would have pretty much the same answer.

Since Pakistan beat India in the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy, the teams had met five more times, all exclusively at ICC events, before their most recent rendezvous at the 2025 Champions Trophy: in Manchester and Ahmedabad at the 50-over World Cup, and in Dubai, Melbourne and New York at the T20 World Cup. Paki­stan managed to win just one of those matches, in Dubai back in 2021. If Mohammad Rizwan’s side believed that the venue, Dubai, would provide them the luck needed to turn around their fortunes for Sunday’s (February 23) contest, it wasn’t to be.

The script read along similar lines to the 2023 World Cup match in Ahmedabad, where Pakistan lost early wickets before two middle-order batsmen played the waiting game and got set, only for them to perish when it was time to push on, promptly causing a collapse. And just like in Ahmedabad, India chased down the target with ease, forcing fans in great numbers on either side of the border to wonder if the India-Pakistan rivalry, once the most emotional in all sport, was even a rivalry anymore. Pakistan’s volatile nature on the cricket field was once celebrated for its unpredictability. But now, especially in Pakistan, the team is criticised for its predictability, especially when it comes to their frequent and mounting losses to India.

Which once again begs the question: Is the India-Pakistan rivalry a rivalry at all if they rarely ever play and when they do, it is a no-contest?

Great rivalries in sport, by their very nature, definition and repu­tation, do not just wither away or disappear into thin air, despite how one-sided it might have got in terms of results during a certain era. England lost eight successive Ashes to Australia between 1989 and 2003. Yet both teams, and their fans, went into each of those Test series with hope and the requisite passion to witness a fight between the traditional enemies. Think New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in baseball, Ford and Ferrari in motorsport, the Cal­cutta Cup (Scotland vs England) in rugby, Brazil versus Argentina in football, or all those gloried inter and intra-city derbies in club football; think even individual sports such as tennis, where Borg versus McEnroe or Federer versus Nadal in professional tennis only ever ceased to be a rivalry when one of them retired from the sport.

For a plethora of reasons, India versus Pakistan—once fiercely fought, even if dominated by Pakistan thanks to their terrific fast bowlers in the 1980s and the 1990s—isn’t what it used to be. So much so that in the recently released Netflix mini-series The Great­est Rivalry: India vs Pakistan, the makers began at the very begin­ning, the birth of Pakistan in 1947, painstakingly covering all the big highlights between then and the turn of the century, only to paint themselves into a corner and stop with India’s historic tour of Pakistan in 2004, 21 long years ago.

In the last two decades, a host of factors ensured India peaked and Pakistan troughed on the cricket field. But two of those fac­tors stood out more than all others, one on each side of the border. The attack on the Sri Lankan team bus outside of the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore in 2009 ensured that international teams would altogether stop touring Pakistan, while the advent of the Indian Premier League (IPL) made the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) the most powerful cricket board in the world, even as India’s vast domestic pool of talent would utilise the annual tour­nament—one that the Pakistanis were not invited to, barring the inaugural season—to entirely change the shape of the modern game.

With no bilateral ties to even the keel and with the two teams meeting exclusively at the big-bill ICC events, where India would end up beating Pakistan over and over again, the gap between their cricketing skills spread wide like a gulf. The writing was long on the wall, but the excitement of an India-Pakistan World Cup fixture across formats was still felt by the fans, perhaps because of what the contest once meant; but largely due to the broadcasters drum­ming up the hype. Until, it all came crashing down on Sunday, February 23, even as Virat Kohli uppishly clattered Khushdil Shah through the offside and to the fence in Dubai, bringing up his 51st ODI hun­dred as well as India’s win, ascertaining not so much Pakistan’s loss or exit from the tournament as he did the immediate death of a once-storied rivalry.

Don’t believe it? Then judge that statement by the reaction of Wasim Akram, one of Pakistan’s greatest fast bowlers who intimidated many an Indian bat­ter through the 1990s with his pace and skill. In the studio of Sports Central, he held his forehead in his palm and said the words “embarrassing” and “frustrating” time and again. There is nothing new with former Pakistani cricketers-turned-pundits lashing out at the incumbent Pakistan team’s per­formances on public platforms—there is a whole sub-genre on YouTube dedicated to just that. But this felt altogether different when Akram said in Urdu: “Did any of our bowlers even look like getting Virat out at all? What are they doing playing for the national team if they didn’t look at all threatening?”

Akram then added: “They had fully given up as a team by the 18th over of the chase. I have never seen that in the history of Pakistan cricket before.” Akram’s great fast-bowling mate, Shoaib Akhtar, was even spicier in the studio of PTV when he shook his head and said: “Look, I’ll be honest. I don’t want or like to even talk about this Pakistan team or Pakistan cricket. The only reason I am doing it is because PTV called me here and I get paid for it. If not, I wouldn’t want to even talk about them.” When pressed about Pakistan’s only real batting talent in Babar Azam, the only active player from his country with over 5,000 ODI runs, Akhtar looked into the camera and addressed Azam directly: “Tu toh shuru se hi fraud ho (You have been a fraud from the beginning).”

It was then that Rizwan, Pakistan captain, said what an entire country already knew but feared nonetheless as he slouched in his seat at the press conference. “Filhaal toh yehi keh sakte hain ki khatam ho gaya. Sach toh yehi hai (We can say that it is finished. This is the truth).” Although it was in reply to a question about Pakistan’s hopes in the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy after two defeats in as many games to New Zealand and India, leaving them with the slimmest of chances of making the semi-final stage (which they would not, after New Zealand beat Bangladesh the following day), Rizwan’s words ring just as true with regard to the state of the India-Pakistan rivalry. It indeed is finished and that’s the truth.

Spare a thought though for Pakistan. This was their moment to shine on the world stage with a top-drawer home event, their big embrace back into the fold by being allowed to host an ICC trophy for the first time since the 1996 World Cup, which was 29 years ago (when that happened, Akram was Pakistan captain and Rizwan was all of three years old). In preparation for the Champi­ons Trophy, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) spent an estimated 16 billion rupees (PKR) to renovate their three main stadiums in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi. It was done in the hope that a single India-Pakistan fixture on any of those grounds would cover the costs, given the money the host country earns from ICC, broadcast rights and endorsements. But at the last minute, the Indian team refused to travel due to security concerns, as they had done during the Asia Cup two years ago, not reciprocating Paki­stan’s presence at the 50-over World Cup held in India back in 2023.

When the standoff ended, it did so with great clarity. Behind the closed doors of boardrooms, it was decided that “India and Pakistan matches hosted by either country at ICC events during the 2024-2027 rights cycle will be played at a neutral venue,” ICC announced. The chosen neutral venue for this event was Dubai where India would play all their matches, including the group clash against Pakistan as well as their semis and the final, should Rohit Sharma’s men make it that far. Thus, although Pakistan were the official hosts, India had the home advantage of playing, and getting used to, just one ground and the added benefit of not having to travel between matches.

But India or no India, the Pakistan team would still get to play in front of their ador­ing fans in a tournament of relevance. The contest began with the hosts taking on New Zealand at the refurbished National Stadium in Karachi on February 19 and the only thing they ended up winning was the toss—not the match (a loss by 60 runs) and certainly not hearts. Immediately, they found themselves in a do-or-die position if they were to advance out of their group, by their next game against India—high stakes, high pressure, high occasion. And to make matters worse, the hosts would have to turn guests and travel to Dubai for the match where the defending champions would lose and bow out of a home tournament that they spent billions on and hardly even played in.

Therefore, with Pakistan out and India already in the semi-finals and threatening to go a step further, the 2025 Champions Trophy could well be remembered as an event hosted by a single city in the UAE, a tournament in which Pakistan were reduced to also-rans who had the opportunity to feature in a couple of matches on home soil. As several former Pakistan players have repeatedly asked in the aftermath of their national team’s exit, was there even a point to hosting the event?

India’s rising fortunes as a cricketing nation have gone hand-in-hand with Pakistan’s fall, although not by design. Just last year, Rohit Sharma’s side ended their World Cup drought by winning the T20 version in Barbados, a punctuation to a run that saw them reach and lose in the final of three world events: two World Test Championships (WTC) in England and the 50-over World Cup at home. But just when all finally seemed hunky dory, India lost two consecutive Test series, blanked by New Zealand at home late last year (which ensured India not only lost a series on home soil for the first time in 12 years but also weakened their chances of making a third straight WTC final) and again to Australia in their backyard earlier this year (which ended their hopes of playing the WTC final this June).

These losses upset Indian cricket fans no end, perhaps because they were by now used to only backing a winning team. Fingers were pointed particularly at two senior members of the side, Rohit and Kohli, who seemed to have taken the losses especially hard. The Indian cricket board knee-jerked into making whole­sale changes to their player policies, even forc­ing the two veteran batting stars to appear in a slew of domestic games—Kohli for the first time in a dozen years. But just when their fu­tures were looking bleak, with both having retired from T20 internationals and slumped in Test cricket, the third format—which just happens to be their favoured one—came to their rescue.

Which brings us to the future of ODI crick­et, a strange old beast that simply refuses to be dragged to the back of the barn and put out of its longstanding misery. With the advent of T20 cricket by the mid-2000s and its subse­quent takeover of the game, played alongside the long, five-day format (which too received an overhaul with the birth of the cyclic Test championship), the 50-over game lost its relevance for fans, players and administrators alike and languished, now largely played only at ICC events. For long its obituary has been written, but here is the catch: ICC has four major tournaments, not one but two of them in the 50-over format—a world event for each of the three formats and an additional 50-over tournament in the form of the Champions Trophy. Even though it is nothing more than a glorified third wheel in the larger scheme of things, it is an ICC major. And it is played in a format that the Indian legends, past and present, tend to dominate.

Rohit Sharma, in such woeful batting form since the end of 2024 that he had to drop himself for the final Test of the Australia series in Sydney, used the build-up 50-over series against England to find his touch again with a century, his 32nd in ODIs, in Cuttack. And instantly, the critics were silenced, at least long enough to not ques­tion his presence at the Champions Trophy where he crossed the 11,000-run mark in the opening fixture against Bangladesh. Then Kohli, not among the runs either, went one better.

Against Pakistan Kohli notched his 51st ODI hundred, two more than Tendulkar’s haul. But he also became only the third batsman to cross 14,000 runs in the format after Tendulkar and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara, getting there an incredible 63 innings faster than his Indian counterpart. These are breathtaking numbers, leav­ing Indian fans with whetted appetites and hungry for a whole lot more, praying that this turn of fortune smudges like wet ink into Test cricket as well. But first there is the small matter of finishing the Champions Trophy on a high, one that was supposed to be re­membered for Pakistan but could well become yet another success story for their once true rival.

Champions Trophy 2025DubaiImam-ul-HaqIndia-Pakistan cricket rivalryIndian cricketMohammad RizwanVirat Kohli