The Asian Cup Cricket Tournament will begin on Tuesday, but for tournament organizers, sponsors and cricket fans, it won’t be before Sunday when the two regional superpowers face each other, for Indian and Pakistan fans.
The India-Pakistan match is considered a marquee event, but the recent conflict between the two countries has brought extra heat to their encounters in Dubai.
Recommended Stories
List of 4 itemsEnd of the list
After all, it will be their first meeting since the Archbishop of South Asia returned from the brink of all-out war in May.
It has been nearly 18 years since India and Pakistan last met in a Test match. This is considered the pinnacle of cricket, five days of cricket.
However, between September 14th and 21st, if the results progressed to the way the organizers wanted, Pakistan and India would play three times.
The decades-old political rift between two nuclear-armed countries is blamed on the refrigerated sports connections, but the same differences are placed aside when regional or global cricket events come.
Pakistan was carved from India in 1947 and led to bloody division of the subcontinent by colonial British people. Over the past 78 years, the nation has fought four wars, traded countless skirmishes, and remained at odds in the prevailing Kashmir region.
The Asian Cup faces political influences not strangers, but the effects of tension bonds between the two.
Pakistan retreated when India held a tournament amid the uprising in Kashmir in 1990-91. The next edition in 1993 was cancelled amid rising tensions between the sides.
However, despite the tensions between the political level and the current cricket impasse that began in 2013, India and Pakistan regularly face each other in the International Cricket Council (ICC) and Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Asian Cup tournaments.
“Maximizing your eyeballs and revenues”
So why can we agree to share three cricket fields in two weeks, but is it impossible for both sides to separate themselves from politics from sports for bilateral exchanges?
“It’s all about maximizing the revenue for the eyes and tournament,” Sami ul Hasan, former head of media and communications at ICC, told Al Jazeera.
“If the ICC is planning a global event, organizers will not consider rankings or other factors, making sure India and Pakistan will play against each other at least once.
“Over the last 20 years, the ICC has changed the format of the tournament several times to ensure that it happens.”
The ICC has previously allowed to correct tournament draws so that Pakistan and India fall into the same group.
Post-tournament viewer figures confirm the high ratings of the match between India and Pakistan.
According to the ICC, the India vs Pakistan fixture in ICC Champions Trophy 2025 was one of India’s most viewed international matches of the day.
It surpassed the India-Pakistan match since ICC Cricket World Cup 2023, which produced over 26 billion minutes of clock time on television and recorded 19.5 billion viewing times.
Tournament organizers such as ICC and ACC usually sell broadcast rights and sponsorships to the highest bidder.
The ICC and ACC distribute the revenue generated from these tournaments among member countries. They can also benefit from more India-Pakistan matches.
According to Hasan, the first question raised by the broadcaster and sponsors is the match between India and Pakistan.
“It’s difficult to quit multiple Indian and Pakistan games in global events, but it’s easy to achieve this result in smaller tournaments like the Asian Cup,” he said.
“Even in the Asian Cup, all they have so far are two matches per tournament. They’re trying a third (in the final) but they haven’t come to fruition yet.”
In 16 iterations of the tournament since its inception in 1984, India and Pakistan have never met in the finals.
“Don’t worry about India and Pakistan.”
India vs Pakistan is always the biggest draw in the cricket tournament, but fans of other participating countries are not troubled by the lack of attention and respect shown to the team.
“We’re not just concerned about what will happen in Sri Lanka matches, we’re not just about Sri Lanka,” said Sri Lanka’s Mohammad Akram.
“For us, it is about our team and the same goes for fans in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and other countries.
“Sri Lanka has always been on the sidelines. It’s always about India and Pakistan, but we don’t care because our team played the most finals.”
Sri Lanka was the second most successful team in the Asian Cup, playing in a record 13 finals and lifting the trophy six times. Another victory in the final will link them to reigning Champions India.
Bend the rules
Focusing on this rivalry can sometimes lead to unprecedented decision-making and bending rules.
Two years ago, at the last Asian Cup held in Sri Lanka, the Indian and Pakistan group stage game was abandoned due to the rain. As both teams reached the next round and more rain was expected, organizers secured a spare day for Super Four Fixture.
The decision came midway through the tournament, frowning and attracting criticism from cricket experts and fans of other participating countries.
“You shouldn’t bend the rules for anyone. What happened didn’t set a good example of the game,” Hasan said. “The play conditions and rules are signed off before the tournament and not tinkered.
“If you change them to accommodate a particular fixture, everything provides a message about the money and commercialization of that single fixture.”
Indian sports ambition
Despite the ongoing political rift between India and Pakistan, both the Cricket Committee and the Government set gave these equipment a green light.
In August, India announced a new sports policy that will not allow teams and athletes to participate in bilateral sporting events with Pakistan, but will allow them to face them in international tournaments.
It also banned Indian athletes from traveling to Pakistan and rejected hosting Pakistani teams and individuals.
According to the former ICC official Hasan, the move is to ensure that India’s ambitions for bidding for the 2036 Olympics and the 2030 Federal Games will not be affected.
“To say we don’t want to play against Pakistan for political reasons would undermine the case as a potential global sports hub,” he said.
