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Cricket PlayersAfter empty threats and hollow chest-thumping, Pakistan come face-to-face with reality as India reduce them to rubble
After all the hype and hoopla, the India vs Pakistan contest was reduced to the dampest of squibs as Ishan Kishan-fuelled India took them to the cleaners.
First, was the buzz of anticipation. Then, the dampener in the form of a brazen boycott that was never going to fly. After this, eventuated hectic back-channel parleying to try and help facilitate a face-saving about-turn. This was followed by a collective sigh of huge relief when the boycott threat was withdrawn to ensure that the most eagerly awaited clash of the T20 World Cup would go ahead as scheduled. The denouement – an absolute damp squib that has taken further sheen off what once used to be a storied, celebrated rivalry.
India came into Sunday’s showdown against Pakistan in Colombo sitting on a five-match winning streak spread over three and a half years. That’s how little the teams play each other in both white-ball formats because their faceoffs are restricted to continental and global competitions. They haven’t played each other in a Test match since December 2007, and it is unlikely that that will change anytime soon. Therefore, their only chance of winning and keeping bragging rights is going one-up in T20 and 50-over Asia Cups and World Cups.
Particularly when it comes to 20-over cricket, India have been miles ahead of their cross-border rivals. The only time there was some kind of a level-playing field was when Pakistan countered India’s 2007 triumph by going all the way in the next edition, in England in 2009. Otherwise, it has been India pretty much all the way. India held a 13-3 record ahead of Sunday’s contest, and were the clear favourites even though there was plenty of hype around Pakistan’s five-pronged spin attack with Usman Tariq, the latest in a long line of mystery bowlers, projected to have a decisive say.
As it turned out, there was no change in the script that has unerringly played out since India’s dramatic victory at the T20 World Cup in Melbourne in October 2022. Virat Kohli uncorked one of the more remarkable knocks in a more-than-remarkable career to overturn certain defeat into stirring victory. Drawing inspiration from their former captain’s exploits, India reeled off a superb victory in a low-scoring match in New York in June 2024, also in the World Cup. Last September, three wins were packaged in a 15-day window spread across three Sundays, the last on finals day, in the Asia Cup in Dubai. If India believed the force was with them, it wasn’t without reason.
In the past, Pakistan had used their unending assembly line of fast bowlers to test India. But in deference to the conditions at the Premadasa Stadium, they stacked their 11 with spinners – five full timers in Tariq, Abrar Ahmed, Mohammad Nawaz, Saim Ayub and Shadab Khan, and a part-timer in the form of Salman Agha, their captain who chose to bowl, rightly, on calling right.
From the very first over in which Agha dismissed Abhishek Sharma for a second duck in as many games, it was evident that batting would be a challenge. There was plenty of turn which, allied with the fact that the ball stopped on pitching, suggested that frenetic run-scoring wasn’t on the cards. But that was only until Ishan Kishan chose to showcase what he is made of.
The Ishan Kishan show
Even until the middle of December, Kishan wasn’t anywhere in the race for a berth in the World Cup spot, not even after his title-winning exploits for Jharkhand in the 20-over inter-state Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Numerous slices of great fortune not just ushered his comeback after more than two years in the wilderness, but also installed him as the first-choice wicketkeeper-batter and Abhishek’s opening partner for the mega event. Kishan warmed up superbly for this encounter with a bruising 61, off just 24 deliveries, against Namibia on Thursday, but this was a more high-pressure game.
Watching the 27-year-old bat, you wouldn’t have guessed. He despatched his third delivery, from Shaheen Shah Afridi, over square-leg for the first of his three sixes. Then followed a stunning sequence of fours and sixes; there were blazing drives, chunky slog-sweeps, and one well-executed switch hit. Such was the ferocity of his attack that Pakistan were driven to forsake their disciplines; their best laid plains spectacularly derailed as they failed to summon the wherewithal to stick to their guns.
Despite the new batters finding it impossible to sustain the tempo and rhythm set by Kishan, India rattled along to 175 for seven which Mike Hesson, the Pakistan coach, said was about 25 above par. It looked comfortably twice more than that when Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah winkled out the top three inside 12 deliveries. Kishan harried and hustled the bowlers into errors, the two new-ball operators forced the Pakistani batters into overreach because the score board pressure was immense.
India outplayed Pakistan on the field, undoubtedly, but also outthought and outsmarted them in the backroom. Tilak Varma chose commonsense over bravado, happy to sail in Kishan’s murderous wake instead of trying to match his flying partner stroke for stroke. In the middle overs, the middle order was content to milk the bowling, knowing that a bad ball would eventually come. And at the death, Shivam Dube opened his broad shoulders to push the score beyond Pakistan’s reach.
By contrast, on a pitch that had become slightly better even though it was anything but placid, Pakistan batted as if they had only ten overs to reel in the Indian tally. Errors flowed freely and India mercilessly punished every single one of them. The final margin, 61, was anything but flattering to Suryakumar Yadav’s side. Pakistan had been annihilated, decimated, comprehensively put in their place. Not for the first time, the chasm between hoopla and reality was immense and unbridgeable. Premadasa on Sunday was the very definition of an anti-climax; no one in their right mind will even attempt to counter that.
