India, Pakistan meet in an ODI for the first time since 2019 World Cup

 Rival Captains – Rohit Sharma (India) and Babar Azam (Pakistan)

• Rivalry is for people to talk about, for us it’s a game – Sharma

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

When India and Pakistan meet at cricket there is always talk of rivalry, but Indian Captain Rohit Sharma said as players that thought is far from them. The two teams are geared to meet each other in the Asia Cup night game at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium today with both sides at full strength.

“Rivalry is there for people to talk about, but for us, we don’t want to look into all those kinds of things,” said Sharma at the pre-match media conference yesterday. “As Team India we want to focus on the opposition we play tomorrow, how we can come up against them, how we can perform and how we can get the things that we want to do right. Focus on them rather than look at all sorts of other things which eventually are not going to help you.”

It is really unfortunate that these two great Asian cricket nations have to meet at neutral venues because of the political indifference that exists between the two countries. The last time they met in an ODI was in the 2019 World Cup in England where India beat Pakistan by 89 runs (D/L method) at Manchester. Pakistan’s last win over India in an ODI was in the final of the ICC Champions trophy in 2017 when they won by 180 runs at the Oval.

Pakistan have already got off the blocks with a win against newcomers Nepal at Multan and have points on the board when they confront India, who play their first match of the tournament.

“It’s always nice to have a good pool of players to choose from. It’s good to have that kind of competition within the team with so many available. It will be quite a challenging task for us to make the playing eleven,” said Sharma. “Speaking of the Asia Cup right now we don’t have any injury concerns. (Jasprit) Bumrah coming back from injury looks in good spirits which is a good sign for us to have. All three quicks are in good shape which is a very positive sign.” Bumrah will be backed by Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Shiraj.

Where India have the edge is in their batting. “We got experience in our batting line-up. A lot of them have played in these types of conditions so they know exactly what sort of game plan and what sort of mindset they need to have. We are here to tick a lot of boxes. When we finish the tournament hopefully we can achieve that before going into the next 1½ months of the World Cup.”

Pakistan captain Babar Azam is banking on his team’s experience of playing in Sri Lanka recently to perform well against India.

“We have been here since July. We have played Test matches, some league (LPL) matches and then the ODIs (against Afghanistan). We are hoping that this will help us to do well against India tomorrow,” said Babar.

Babar shot down talks of pressure surrounding an Indo-Pak match, and said they were just concentrating on the game and not on outside noises. “There is no extra pressure. Yes, the India vs Pakistan match is always one of high intensity, but we have experienced players and we just need to concentrate on our strengths and do well,” he added.