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11th over: India 98-2 (Varma 13, Suryakumar 8) Beware the judder man when the moon is fat. Usman Tariq comes on with his stuttering, syncopated action. Suryakumar smack his first ball for four, way too short. The rest of the over is a handful, variations in flight and spin. You would simply hate to face it. Six off the over.
10th over: India 92-2 (Varma 12, Suryakumar 3) Brill over from Mohammad Nawaz as he skips through six deliveries in the blink of an eye, just three singles off it. India half way through the overs.
9th over: India 89-2 (Varma 11, Suryakumar 1) The Indian captain arrives in the middle and is off the mark right away with a push into the covers.
WICKET! Ishan Kishan b Saim Ayub 77 (India 88-2)
Bowled him! The dangerman is skittled and Pakistan desperately needed that. Saim Ayub get some turn and Kishan is too early on the stroke.
8th over: India 82-1 (Ishan Kishan 72, Varma 10) Shadab Khan into the attack, Kishan sweeps into the deep and takes two. SIX! A monster sweep into the scoreboard at midwicket! Ishan Kishan is on one. Flatter sweep brings four more, some double teapots can now be spotted amongst the Pakistan fielders. Two twos and single sees Kishan keep strike after plundering 17 from the over.
“The Manhattan’s are climbing” says Matthew Hayden of the Indian run rate. This one is for the ‘Dos.
7th over: India 65-1 (Ishan Kishan 55, Varma 10) Lovely soft hands from Kishan as he dabs a late cut off Abrar for four. Four more! Too full from the bowler and Kishan bunts back over the bowler’s head to bring up his fifty! Four more with a lofted cover drive! Abrar goes over the wicket and escapes from the over with two dots and a single from Kishan to finish. 13 runs off the over, Pakistan need wickets, pronto.
6th over: India 52-1 (Ishan Kishan 42, Varma 10) Saim Ayub comes back for a second over, Kishan plays a real hack into the leg side and just clears the man leaping at mid on. Four runs the result. Lewk in the bewk. A thick outside edge sees the ball trace across the outfield rapidly for four more. Powerplay done, honours about even.
5th over: India 41-1 (Ishan Kishan 36, Varma 5) More spin with Abrar Ahmed. SIX! Kishan picks his first ball off leg stump and sweeps for SIX. Pressure on the bowler now, Abrar responds well with two dots. Too short with the next and Kishan slaps in the gap at cover for four. He looks dangerous, eleven runs off the over. One more in the Powerplay to go.
4th over: India 30-1 (Ishan Kishan 25, Varma 5) Saim Ayub does a job, Kishan gets him away for a leg side four but its just five off the over. A quick single off the last sees Shaheen hit the stumps with a throw from mid off but Ishan had dived and made his ground.
3rd over: India 25-1 (Ishan Kishan 20, Varma 5) Salman Agha gives himself a second over. Kishan swipes a length ball over wide mid-on for four but nearly perishes to a loose sweep shot next ball, it ploops over the fielder behind square and lands safe. Nine off the over, Salman has 1-10 off two overs. We’ll have more spin too, Saim Ayub is coming onto bowl the next.
2nd over: India 16-1 (Ishan Kishan 12, Varma 4) Here comes Shaheen Shah Afridi. Pace very much back on. Bosh! His first ball is banged in and boshed away by Ishan for SIX over square leg. A spawny four off an inside edge follows and it is a frenetic start. Fair to say the crowd are loving it. Two dots before another edge, this time from Varma, flies to the fence for four. Fifteen runs off the over.
1st over: India 1-1 (Ishan Kishan 1, Varma 0) Tilak Varma in at first drop for India after Abishek hauls himself off the field with his second duck in as many matches. What a start from Salman Agha and Pakistan.
WICKET! Abhishek Sharma c Shaheen Shah Afridi b Salman Agha 0 (India 1-1)
Gone! The gamble does indeed pay off for Salman Agha and Pakistan. He spears a ball into the tacky surface, Abishek tries to pull it away but does not time it at all, serving only to plink a catch to Shaheen at mid on!
A dot to start from Salman, will this gamble pay off? It’s only the first time he has opened the bowling in a T20I… a single follows as Ishan gets off the mark with a hack into the leg side, the fielder in the deep well placed. Three dots follow… and there’s a wicket!
Right then, here come the players. Abishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan stroll out to raucous noise. Pakistan are going with spin to start, Salman Agha has opted to turn his own arm over for the opening stanza. Let’s play!
The players line up for the anthems. In case you didn’t know, India lead the head-to-head record against Pakistan in T20 World Cups by 7-1. Pakistan lost particularly galling knockout matches to their rivals in Melbourne 2022 and in New York in 2024, they were extremely well placed in both only to come out on the losing side on both occasions.
Predictably, there was no handshake between the two captains.
We might not see boundaries raining quite so freely in Colombo this evening, this wicket has been a little stodgy and has suited bowlers talking the pace off and bowling into the middle of the surface.
Teams:
Pakistan XI: Sahibzada Farhan (wk), Saim Ayub, Salman Agha (capt), Babar Azam, Shadab Khan, Usman Khan (wk), Mohammad Nawaz, Faheem Ashraf, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Usman Tariq, Abrar Ahmed
India XI: Ishan Kishan (wk), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav (capt), Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Rinku Singh, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah
Pakistan are unchanged. For India Kuldeep Yadav replaces Arshdeep Singh and Abhishek Sharma comes in for Sanju Samson.
Pakistan win the toss and will bowl first
The R Premadasa stadium is indeed packed with fans from both sides and Sri Lankan fans who have turned out to see the spectacle.
Pakistan captain Salman Agha calls the coin correctly and inserts India. India captain Suryakumar Yadav isn’t fussed – he says he would have batted first. The pitch will likely be tacky and quite slow, it’s the same one Zimbabwe beat Australia on. Teams incoming!
Not that the billion or so people watching will be thinking along these line but the result of this match isn’t crucial in terms of both sides progression in the tournament. Both teams have won their first two games and can suck up a loss, not that they will want to in this particular match.
Preamble
James Wallace
So here we are. A cricket match will take place in Colombo today.
Last month the Pakistan government announced that they had refused permission for their cricket team to play this T20I World Cup fixture against India in solidarity with Bangladesh. The latter were removed from the tournament after they themselves refused to travel to India because of security concerns. Scotland, who missed out on the final qualifying place to Italy last year were called up to take their place with just two weeks notice.
In actuality, Bangladesh’s decision came amid worsening tensions between themselves and India, a geo-political dispute that has spilt over onto the cricket field.
In January, Bangladesh bowler Mustafizur Rahman was removed from the Indian Premier League (IPL) by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), a direct result of political pressure. Pakistan saw their opportunity to make a move, their decision no doubt influenced by India’s refusal to play in Pakistan when they themselves hosted another ICC event – the Champions Trophy, last year. Cricket was thus used as a political football. Depressingly, this is nothing new.
At the Asia Cup held in Dubai in September of last year, India’s players refused to shake hands with their Pakistan counterparts. They also refused to accept the tournament trophy from the head of the Pakistan Cricket Board. Even more remarkably, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media after the match comparing the cricket team’s cricketing victory to ‘Operation Sindoor’ – the military conflict fought between the two countries in Kashmir in May 2025.
The last two weeks have seen figures from the nations’ governments as well as the governing body of cricket scrabble to get a game on so as not to jeopardise the ICC’s £2.2bn ($3bn) broadcast deal.
The whole situation is a sad reflection both of the fragility of world cricket’s eco-system as well as a cracked mirror reflecting the worsening relations between countries in a part of the world where the game means so much. Today’s game is now back on after all parties and the ICC reached an agreement, basically that it was too big to not happen.
Writing in The Times, former England captain, journalist and broadcaster Michael Atherton has declared the match a miserable, toxic spectacle. “Once the fixture was one that journalists and broadcasters begged to attend, now it’s nothing more than a proxy for political point-scoring.”
You feel for the players, although comments from some on both sides have hardly helped things either. They won’t shake hands today but they will play a game of cricket. Let’s hope it is a good one and that for a few brief hours the game itself can serve as distraction and balm.
Play begins at 1.30pm GMT with the toss and teams half an hour before that.
