Cricket the big winner as India, Pakistan get ready for Sunday’s clash

Dubai: February 15, 2026. The day the earth stood still … again.

Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch, but if you were to look at history, it is certainly not too far from the truth either.

After what seemed like eternity, the powers-that-be finally decided late on Monday night that the box-office showdown, known in cricketing circles as the India vs Pakistan clash, will go ahead as scheduled in Colombo this coming Sunday.

A lot of water has flown under the bridge to get to this point, but no cricketing fan, or any sports fan for that matter, is complaining. This is the one match that not only rings the cash register, it also takes people down memory lane and evokes the kind of passion not seen in any other bilateral contest in sport.

Netflix even made a three-part documentary series titled ‘The Greatest Rivalry: India vs Pakistan’, aired in 2025, that sought to explore the rivalry’s “intricate past and uncertain present on the pitch”.

But then, this is not just about the 22 players on the pitch for whom it is the one match to truly become heroes in their respective countries. It is also not about the officials who worked behind the scenes to make this game happen. It is about the fans on both sides of the border and the millions of Indian and Pakistani expats scattered around the world, who will be glued to the television sets come Sunday.

Back in the 1970s and the early 80s, when we were young and cricket rivalry between India and Pakistan wasn’t as big as it is today, it was the hockey contests between the two countries that captured our imagination. The two Asian neighbours were superpowers prior to the synthetic turf era and any clash between the two nations — be it in the World Cup, the Olympics, the now scrapped Champions Trophy or even the Sultan Azlan Shah tournament in Malaysia — was quite the occasion. Sadly, hockey has since failed to elicit similar emotions among the new generation, as dominance in the game has shifted elsewhere.

But cricket has had no such problems despite the last bilateral Test series between India and Pakistan being held nearly 19 years ago. The two countries have continued playing each other in multilateral tournaments in One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals.

The T20 Asia Cup held last year in the UAE saw India and Pakistan meeting each other three times with packed crowds watching the drama unfold in Dubai on each occasion and effectively silencing critics who said the rivalry had reached its saturation point and interest had waned in the absence of India’s stalwarts Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma who retired after India won the 2024 T20 World Cup in the West Indies.

Come Sunday, the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo will be filled to the rafters, make no mistake about it. The new-age big-hitters like Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, skipper Surya Kumar Yadav and Tilak Verma from India and Saim Ayub, Sahibzada Farhan and skipper Salman Ali Agha from Pakistan have a new generation of fans brought up on a diet of slam-bang cricket.

And no matter which side wins this contest, the very fact that the match is going ahead means cricket is already the big winner.