5 takeaways as India exposes Pakistan’s 50-over frailties yet again – Prism

It’s always unpleasant to lose to India but what’s even more depressing is that at this point, Pakistan’s ODI unit cannot even deliver a competitive game, let alone a win.

Sunday’s defeat was Pakistan’s sixth straight in an ODI against India, which we’d have still been okay had they been putting up a fight and keeping the games close.

Look at the pattern of the last six fixtures between the two teams:

• India win by 8 wickets in Sept 2018
• India win by 9 wickets in Sept 2018
• India win by 89 runs in Jun 2019
• India win by 228 runs in Sept 2023
• India win by 7 wickets in Oct 2023
• India win by 6 wickets in Feb 2025

This lack of quality has even impacted the quality of Pak-India matches, with us having to go to more than a decade ago in 2014 to find an ODI fixture that went down to the wire.

In a way, we must thank the politicians of these two nations for keeping this rivalry alive, because the cricketers, especially from our side, are certainly incapable of putting up a show that is worthy of its billing. Cut out the war of words and the actual wars and what you’ll be left with is a professional cricketing unit against a haphazardly put together team at the last minute. This is no rivalry as far as pure cricketing merits are concerned.

So why did we lose this time? Were Indian bowlers swinging miles? Was Hardik Pandya suddenly bowling 150kmph? Was there an advantage that the Indian batters have? What extraordinary cricketing skill did they have to dig deep and pull out of their repertoire to get the job done?

The answer is none. They might as well have done all that, but the fact is they didn’t need to because none were needed. Against Pakistan, it seems, all that Indian bowlers have to do is bowl the right line, be sharp in the field and be calculated with the bat. That’s it. Nothing extraordinary is needed as Pakistan would do all the ordinary.

Where Indian pacers — whom we dismiss as ‘medium-pacers’ — hit the right lines, Pakistan’s so-called fast bowlers were wayward. Where the Indian fielders grabbed all their catches, their Pakistani counterparts grassed four. Where Indian batters batted with calculated finesse, the Pakistani batters had literally thrown away their wickets.
This was another one of those many many times when as a viewer, you ended a Pak-India match thinking why can’t Pakistan replicate so many of the seemingly replicable feats of the other side?

At this point, it’s almost a routine thing for Virat Kohli. An entire generation of Pakistani fans has grown up seeing this man torment them through their TV screens every few years.

If there is a target to be chased against Pakistan, bet your bottom dollar that he’d do it with ease and style. These pages and many others are filled with his batting greatness so there is no point doing it again.

The ultimate compliment we can begrudgingly pay this all-time great is that in all of the history of Pak-India cricket matches, no other player on either side of the border has had a greater impact than him. Not Imran Khan, not Wasim Akram, not Waqar Younis, not anyone else.

While Kohli gets all the attention — and deservedly so — for his demolition job against Pakistan match in, match out, one man whose impact in this particular matchup is not talked enough is Kuldeep Yadav.

The left-arm spinner has developed a liking for Pakistan greater than even Kohli. This is because despite all that we think of Kohli, whose ODI batting average of 59.84 against Pakistan is only marginally better than his career average of 58.2. He does things to Pakistan but he does it to everyone else, too. Yadav, on the other hand, has a Pakistan specific bowling average of 14.0, which is almost 100pc better than his career ODI average of 26.24.

Almost every time he has been given the ball in an ODI against Pakistan, he has picked up key wickets, and this Sunday was no different. The 30-year-old picked up three this time and conceded just 40 in his nine overs.

Being troubled in this fashion is almost strange and a far cry from the 1990s when Pakistan batters used to absolutely dominate spinners. But let’s not touch this sob-fest of what we used to be and what we are now.

Where do Pakistan go from here? Well, first they got to go home and face the music.

Good thing is that the criticism would come thick and fast, but it would vanish quickly as there is the rest of the Champions Trophy to be hosted.

Once the tournament is over though, expect the critics to come back with venom. The ignominy of seeing Pakistan fall at the first hurdle of a rare ICC tournament being hosted on home soil should bring a lot of backlash.

In the aftermath of such shocks, the prudent thing to do would be to look inwards and do some soul-searching. But that’s rarely done here. What’s done plenty is wholesale changes just for the optics and giving the impression that those responsible for the debacle have been dumped. If that route is taken and if mere replacements rather than actual reforms are undertaken, expect us to be in this position again sometime in the future.

Header image: India’s Virat Kohli and Axar Patel shake hands with Pakistan players after the CT2025 match on Feb 23, 2025. — Reuters