India vs Pakistan is finally here. Over to cricket now
There isn't much riding on this game from the tournament's perspective, but try telling that to the fans from either country
Big picture
Well, everything about this game is big picture. If we needed a reminder of how much in cricket is sustained by this fixture, it came over the past two weeks, when it dangled over the precipice of not happening at all. The result of an India-Pakistan match might feel like it means everything, but, as the ICC view has appeared for at least the last decade and a half, it doesn't have to mean anything at all. It just needs to happen.
And then there's the rivalry. Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav triumphally declared, after the second of three Asia Cup wins over Pakistan in Dubai, that this was no longer a rivalry, as if it were solely the cricket played within the boundary that had set its terms. India may now measure its cricketing standards against teams that play superior cricket to Pakistan, but crowds still pack stadiums more consistently against this side, and it draws more eyeballs than games against purportedly better competition. In Pakistan, meanwhile, there has never really been an attempt to deny that a win against India matters most of all.
Perhaps it is absence that has made Pakistan supporters' hearts grow fonder. They have won three games against India in the past decade, and two of them have become iconic enough to be referred to in numerical shorthand. You'd need little further explanation in Pakistan beyond "180 runs" and "152-0" to know what you were talking about. But while they represent two of Pakistan's three wins, the 17 defeats on the other side of the ledger have clustered into one sad muckheap.
The slightly smaller picture is that this game doesn't have much riding on it from the tournament's perspective. Both sides have come through scares to compile 2-0 records against less fancied opposition, and a defeat is unlikely to complicate progress to the next round for either. This, really, is a game that exists for its own sake, outside the context of the tournament it is a part of.
On the field, well, we know the score. India have both a cricketing and psychological edge, having won their three games against Pakistan at the Asia Cup in three different ways. They won with the ball in the first, the bat in the second, and the mind in the final, opening up further wounds in a rivalry whose tide Pakistan are struggling to find ways to reverse. India's top order is uniquely devastating in T20Is, their middle order has heft, their spin has dazzling world-class variety, and their fast bowling has Jasprit Bumrah. There are increasingly few nits to pick with any of it.
It can feel bleak at times for Pakistan, but only those who know little about Pakistan cricket will assume they go in without hope. Curiously, for all the gulf that has opened up between these sides, Pakistan will be scratching their heads wondering how they don't come into this match with a three-game T20 World Cup win streak over India. After their decisive win in 2021, they let victory slip from their hands in Melbourne in 2022 and in New York in 2024. It is where they will have learned how vast the difference between hope and belief is, and in moments where the match presents them with opportunities, as those two and last year's Asia Cup final did, Pakistan will need to find a way to grasp them.
India against Pakistan gets talked about a lot, and almost never for the right reasons. But, for a few hours on Sunday, that's exactly what could happen. That, in itself, is perhaps a good enough reason to get a game on Sunday, and, with any luck, a good one.
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Anupamaa
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