A few days ago, one of our viewers sent me an itinerary and said India would play Pakistan in Lahore on March 1, 2025. He also said that talk of the fixture was viral in Pakistan. My first response was to go back to a tweet I had put out in November 2023. I had said India would not travel to Pakistan unless there was a radical rethink at the Government of India level, and would ask the ICC to host the Champions Trophy on the same hybrid model as the 2023 Asia Cup. I told him the same, and said there was no reason to believe things are any different with terror attacks continuing unabated.
First things first – traveling to Pakistan is not a BCCI call. It is a Government of India decision and would require clearance from the External Affairs and Home ministries. We haven’t heard anything to that effect, and chances are we will not in the near future. For Pakistan to go ahead and finalise an itinerary with India playing in Lahore was way off the mark. If it was a pressure tactic, it was always bound to fail. And if India cites security concerns based on government directives, there is nothing that the ICC or any other body can do. Security is a matter of national concern and no apex body can negate that. As a result, there is very little that Pakistan can do except to agree to a hybrid model. India will not have to face a single legal case if the security concerns come from the Government, something the BCCI knows only too well.
Some have suggested that Pakistan should play hard ball and push the ICC to conduct the tournament without India. The truth is there is no world cricket without India. The tournament will have no sheen and broadcast revenue will fall to a quarter. It is not feasible to go ahead with a tournament without India and the ICC knows it well. Every other board will have economic considerations in mind, and will not agree to such a proposition. The only alternative left is the hybrid model. It has already been tried in the Asia Cup and is a doable proposition with Dubai emerging as a strong option in February 2025 because of the weather. It is in everyone’s interest to host India’s matches in Dubai and go ahead with the tournament.
5@5: Indian team unlikely to travel to Pakistan for Champions Trophy 2025 | Live Discussion https://t.co/GZNbcXFs0G
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Make no mistake, world cricket needs Pakistan as well. So it is impossible to go ahead with the tournament without Pakistan in the mix. With geopolitics holding centre stage, the option to manoeuvre is little, and it is in the ICC’s interest to try and convince Pakistan to agree to what it had accepted back in September 2023.
Now to the question of why Pakistan jumped the gun and finalised a schedule, announcing Lahore as the venue for an India-Pakistan encounter. Was it playing to the gallery? Was it an attempt to win over their fans and show off that they were trying to push India? Did they actually believe that India would travel when terror attacks continue to kill hundreds of innocents on Indian soil?
Frankly, it will have to be a delicate balancing act. While egos will soon take centre stage and administrators will play a game of one-upmanship, the truth is out there for everyone to see. Come what may, India will not travel unless things improve radically. And in such a situation, the only way the Champions Trophy can be salvaged is by staging it in a hybrid form. The argument that Pakistan came to India for the World Cup doesn’t hold either, for India is not Pakistan. The ground realities in the two countries are fundamentally different, so to suggest that India has to reciprocate holds no water.
We haven’t seen the end of the story. Very soon, Pakistan will retaliate with strong words. They have to. Posturing will start and continue for a while. But that won’t change the ground reality. India won’t travel, and the tournament has to happen. Another hybrid model is the only option. Keeping economic considerations in mind, Pakistan will have to compromise, whether they like it or not.