And thus it is the end of the Indo-Pak cricket rivalry..!
15th February 2026-Sunday will go down in the global cricketing history as the day of funeral of the so-called traditional cricket rivalry between India and Pakistan. This hype in the name of the rivalry was actually the creation of circumstances of history and was fed to the media for the last fifty years with vehemence by the vested interests. The social media over the last one decade in particular danced to its orchestrated tune and generated a lot of noise specifically in India and Pakistan influencing the minds of generations in both the nations.
The fact is that on 15th February 2026, this artificial rivalry and the connected hype came to a virtual and sudden end with the ‘heroics’ of the Pakistan team on the Premadasa Cricket Stadium in Colombo-Sri Lanka during the T20 World Cup Group match between India and Pakistan. India defeated Pakistan miserably and set the record against Pakistan in the T20 World Cups at 8:1 in favour of India.
Three months before the T20 World Cup, which is currently being hosted successfully by India and Sri Lanka jointly under the aegis of ICC, Pakistan ventured to create a number of controversies through media, social media and the political platforms. There has been a permanent complaint of Pakistan against the ICC and BCCI regarding their role in world cricket. The complaint is based upon the ground realities that BCCI has been the main contributor to the ICC treasury and the consequent policy and planning of the ICC.
Pakistan was always in a denial mode in regard to India in all fields and aspects including cricket and beyond. They don’t want to realise and acknowledge the hard realities that the BCCI has assumed its status based upon its meticulous planning, qualification, merit, talent, hard work and performance. It is correct that for the last two decades, particularly from 2007, Indian cricket has put itself in a commanding position. Then the performance on the field by the players has brought additional laurels for the country out of turn, consistently and continuously. It goes absolutely to the credit of the BCCI management and its able office bearers that India was playing a key role in global cricket.
India as on date is a powerhouse of cricket globally and the international players, bodies and think-tanks are attracted towards India for inspiration, participation and promotion of the game. ICC has slowly and steadily earned great friendship with the BCCI and consequently the harvest of the relationship is being distributed by the ICC among all the big and small national boards of cricket. No cricketing nation can just wish away India. The bonhomie of the Big-Three, India-Australia-England, and the BCCI is not liked by Pakistan. However, instead of improving their own performances and status to reach to the level of the Big-Three, Pakistan misuses occasions, events and situations to create controversies to its benefit and gives every possible political turn to the issues before the cricketing world involving India.
The Indian government took a conscious decision after the 26/11 gory terror incidents in Mumbai that involved Pakistani terrorists and their army in it. The government of India stopped bilateral cricket series with Pakistan for an indefinite period. The last bilateral series between India and Pakistan was held in the year 2012. The new political dispensation in India under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi in 2014 and thereafter took forward the doctrine of ‘Terror & Talks won’t go together’ meticulously in regard to Pakistan and also banned Indian players from visiting Pakistan for any sort of cricket match.
However, the government allowed the BCCI to go ahead with its participation in the international tournaments and events as per its commitments with the ICC and thus the BCCI insisted for hybrid-model in case the tournament was organised in Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan was beaten by Team India consistently in International tournaments and also the Asia Cup and the Asian Games. For the last ten years, Pakistan performed very poorly against India and has lost as many as 20 matches in international tournaments against India. Its miserable failure to come up to the expectations of its own citizens and fans in this regard in recent history caused great depression, disappointment and consequent frustration within Pakistan and Pakistanis.
The captain of T20 Team India, Surya Kumar Yadav in a talk show, previously explained that there was nothing like ‘rivalry’ left between India and Pakistan cricket teams. He meant to say that India had gone too ahead of Pakistan and the status of the so-called traditional rivalry had evaporated with the passage of time. The media houses and social media players in Pakistan show extreme interest in creating controversies on the subject and generate heat about the whole international tournament. They try to provide covering fire to the regular failures of the PCB and the Pakistan team. Political controversies around cricket make them earn their bread and butter and they create a false notion that the matches can be won in their studios. They did the same thing time and again even during a number of tournaments including Asia Cups, ODI World Cup, T20 World Cup and the Champions Trophy in the past.
When BCB made an issue in connection with the matter related to IPL and Mustafizur Rehman connecting it with their participation in the T20 World Cup, the ICC called a meeting of its governing board to decide the issue. Bangladesh was sidelined in the meeting on the basis of a 14:2 vote; and Scotland was accommodated in place of Bangladesh. Pakistan tried to turn the whole issue into a political theatre and threatened to boycott the 15 February 2026 match against India. Their Prime Minister made a categorical public statement on it.
In a meeting with the ICC representatives, Pakistan put a number of demands before the ICC including organising bilateral series with India, holding tri-nation series having India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as participants, ensuring India tour to Bangladesh in September 2026. The ICC rejected all these demands saying that these were outside their jurisdiction. Then it was insisted upon that Bangladesh should be compensated for the loss it was accruing due to its non-participation. ICC said that it was authorised only to waive off any future sanctions to BCB and ensured that the same would be done by the ICC. Pakistan then made a demand for increase in its share which the ICC said can be decided only by the ICC Board of which Pakistan was also a member. Immediately after the meeting, PCB took a U Turn and declared its renewed intent to take part in the February 15 match against India which they consequently lost very badly.
Indian and Indian fans have lost all sort of interest in cricket matches against Pakistan in the new context. They don’t see Pakistan as their relevant rival or competitor. The younger generation of Indians don’t see any sort of competition in any field with Pakistan including the sports. Pakistan for them is a nation that should be left to its own fate. They fully support the present dispensation in India to keep Pakistan at bay and don’t have any sort of functional relationship with them. For them, the actual national sport of Pakistan is terrorism and that Pakistan was an epicentre of global terrorism.
However, the continuous defeats and particularly the crushing one on 15 February 2026 may lead Pakistan to deeper introspection. Some of it is also visible on their media platforms as well nowadays. The rivalry stands buried and possibly forever.
The author is a senior BJP and KP leader, Human Rights Defender, and a columnist.
