India and Pakistan renew their rivalry on Sunday, September 21 in the India vs Pakistan Cup 2025. Yes, let’s call the tournament what it is — not the Asia Cup, but the India vs Pakistan Cup. And this is not meant as a disrespect to any other team, but this is how the tournament treats itself.

India and Pakistan games are slotted on Sunday evenings – for primetime TV. They are drawn in the same group every time so that they play each other as often as possible. In fact, let’s talk about the ticketing fiasco for a moment. The organisers earlier did not allow fans to buy single tickets for the India vs Pakistan clash. If you wanted to watch the arch-rivals play, you had to buy a combination ticket of three matches in the tournament.

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But the demand was grossly overestimated. Hardly anyone wanted to buy the package deal, and the organisers were eventually forced to go back to single-match tickets. By then, the damage had been done — the fiasco hit sales badly, and many seats went empty in the stadium.

What the organisers perhaps did not realise was that despite the geopolitical tensions, the novelty of an India-Pakistan cricket game had started to fade. Nearly 30 per cent of the stands remained empty in the Dubai International Stadium during the group-stage clash, and rightly so. Why would anyone want to watch India vs Pakistan?

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On one side, there is India, a global superpower in world cricket, while on the other side is Pakistan, which is busy changing its captain and coaching staff every six months. What we perhaps did not realise is that the Asia Cup was not about cricket at all. It had become the perfect place for highly placed officials to create unnecessary drama against the backdrop of a dead contest.

It all started with India captain Suryakumar Yadav not shaking hands with Pakistan skipper Salman Agha at the toss. The murmur was that Salman Agha had been told by match referee Andy Pycroft not to shake Surya’s hand either.

The gesture, or lack of it, infuriated the Pakistan captain and the board, who launched formal complaints against both Pycroft and the Indian players for abiding by the Spirit of Cricket. One thing led to another and suddenly, PCB wanted to withdraw from the Asia Cup, unless Pycroft was removed from the tournament.

If this was bizarre, it became even more so when Pakistan failed to stick to their boycott plan and decided to eventually play their final group-stage game against UAE, even though ICC refused to sack Pycroft from his position.

But that’s about it. That’s where the curtain falls on the drama, and the cricket struggles to hold the stage.

Because in cricketing terms, there is such a big mismatch between the two teams that Pakistan cannot win unless they play a perfect game — and India suffer a generational choke.

India vs Pakistan: What’s in the Game?

So that brings us to the one point that everyone has been avoiding — what’s exactly in this game?

Would you rather watch a rivalry between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which is at least more evenly matched on paper, and has given dramatic results on plenty of occasions? Or does India vs Pakistan still deserve the billing, even if the contest no longer delivers?

The last time Pakistan beat India in an international game was in 2022, when they hammered Rohit Sharma’s team in the Asia Cup. After that, the T20 World Cup clash in Melbourne was a near miss for them, but since then they have been in such turmoil that they simply have not been able to put out decent performances.

“Pakistan hasn’t played good cricket for a couple of years now. They have good individual players, but they haven’t clicked as a unit,” former India cricketer Deep Dasgupta said ahead of the Sunday clash.

“There’s still a clear difference in quality between India and Pakistan at the moment, but Pakistan remains a dangerous side,” he added.

Has India vs Pakistan turned into a Soap Opera?

For the rivalry to truly exist, it’s high time that either Pakistan start playing better cricket or India perhaps send their second-string sides — the ones they generally use in exposure tours to Ireland and Zimbabwe.

Because at the end of the day, a rivalry is only as good as the contest it produces on the field. When the clash turns into a one-sided affair, the tension and excitement fade, no matter how intense the history or how charged the atmosphere off the pitch.

Right now, the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry feels less like a battle between two equals and more like a spectacle where the real fireworks happen behind the scenes — in the boardrooms, the press conferences, and the social media spats.

That kind of drama might fill the headlines and keep the conversation alive, but it leaves fans questioning what they’re actually watching. Is it cricket, or just a soap opera in cricket whites? And when the on-field action can’t match the hype, you begin to wonder if the magic of this storied rivalry is slowly slipping away — lost somewhere between the politics and the power plays.

If this rivalry is to reclaim its place as one of the most thrilling chapters in world sport, the players need to deliver performances worthy of the name. Until then, all we’re left with is a shadow of what it once was — a contest overshadowed by noise, where the real battle is fought off the pitch, and the fans are left waiting for the cricket to catch up.

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