India-Pakistan cricket matches continue to bring in record numbers despite big gulf between both teams

The T20 World Cup contest between India and Pakistan this past Sunday fetched the maximum viewership numbers for an ICC T20 World Cup match.

Published on: Feb 20, 2026, 13:18:23 IST

Written by Prateek Srivastava

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Suryakumar Yadav played down the cricket rivalry between India and Pakistan at the Asia Cup last year, but that has not abated the interest among fans by any means. The contest between the sub-continental neighbours continue to keep fans on both sides glued.

India-Pakistan matches do bring the entire country to a halt. (Hindustan Times)

This past Sunday India beat Pakistan in the 2026 T20 World Cup, and even though it was a one-sided contest, the viewership numbers are nothing short of staggering. JioStar, the official digital and broadcast partner of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026, has said that the high-octane match at Colombo recorded a massive digital reach of 163 million. It’s the biggest to date. Never before an ICC T20 World Cup match got this type of reach.

Even the final match between India and South Africa in the 2024 T20 World Cup, which Rohit Sharma’s men won, couldn’t generate those numbers. Not just that, the India-Pakistan contest from that edition on digital was no match for the encounter on February 15, 2026. According to JioStar, the Colombo match saw a 56% growth on the previous India-Pakistan T20 World Cup encounter in the United States of America in 2024.

On mobile, more milestones were set. “On mobile, the game clocked the highest match reach in the league stage of any ICC T20 event and 1.2x more than the last India-Pakistan clash at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024. Recognised as the Greatest Rivalry in cricket, the India-Pakistan contest demonstrated its unmatched appeal as fans converged on JioHotstar. On CTV, the match reach was 2.4x higher than the India-Pakistan contest of the 2024 edition.

“The match generated a staggering 20 billion minutes of total watch time across all screens, underscoring the massive depth of fan engagement. This led to a 42% increase in consumption compared to the previous edition’s fixture, driven by the Indian national cricket team’s dominant performance as they extended their head-to-head record over Pakistan at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup to 8–1.

“On linear TV, the highly-anticipated match delivered equally stellar performance, clocking a TVR growth of 71% to become the highest-rated India-Pakistan T20 contest since 2021,” JioStar said on Friday.

These are indeed extraordinary numbers. All the more impressive since the India-Pakistan matches have not been as competitive in the last few years as before, which goes to show that fans are least bothered about the political situation between both the countries as well the chasm in quality between the two teams.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prateek Srivastava
Prateek Srivastava is a senior sports journalist having been in the profession for two decades now. He started his print career with the India Today Group and later also worked for the Asian Age. In 2009, sensing the wind of change, he switched to the digital media and joined Mobile ESPN. There, he covered the 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2010 Hockey World Cup as a venue reporter. He did plenty of voice-over work too, over there. After leaving Mobile ESPN, Prateek went on to work for Cricketnext, Gocricket and Cricbuzz. At Gocricket (Times Internet Limited), he covered the 2014 T20 World from Bangladesh. There he also received a team leadership award, given at the end of the month. Prateek has also covered the 2016 T20 World Cup in India, this time working for Sportz Interactive. He also worked for Chinese giants Alibaba over two years and led their ""Short News"" content team at UC Browser. While cricket is Prateek’s expertise, he has also done a lot of golf. In fact, he has covered India’s first two European Tour events back in the late noughties. He has also done extensive writing on football having been associated with the Indian Super League for three seasons. Finally, Prateek is a literature aficionado and swears by Philip Roth and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and when he doesn’t joke, he is usually quiet and at work.Read More

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