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2 min readFeb 15, 2026 06:26 PM IST
India and Pakistan players line up ahead of their match at the 2024 T20 World Cup. (AP)
Former England player Michael Atherton slammed the modern-day India vs Pakistan fixtures, calling it a ‘miserable spectacle’ that has become ‘too big to fail’. He also added that he would much rather cover matches featuring Italy and Nepal, rather than a India vs Pakistan game.
“This is the fixture that has become too big to fail — the contest that allows for the functioning of the international cricket system as it stands — even though it has become an unattractive game in its present guise, as a proxy for political point-scoring,” Atherton wrote in his column for The Times.
“There is likely to be the usual feverish anticipation over the next day or two; breathless articles about the number of eyeballs on the game, usually said to be somewhere in the mid-hundreds of millions, and the importance of the occasion. In truth, it has become a miserable spectacle recently — both on the field, where it has become too one-sided, and off it, where the result has been exploited in a performative way,” he added.
“Once upon a time, it was the fixture that any journalist or broadcaster would beg to cover, it being the biggest, most consequential in the sport. Yet this week, to be frank, greater satisfaction was to be had covering matches involving Nepal and Italy,” he wrote further.
On Sunday, India and Pakistan will meet for the first time since the Asia Cup final where Suryakumar and Co had defeated their Men in Green counterparts. After the match, India refused to accept the trophy from Pakistan’s Mohsin Naqvi, also the president of the Asian Cricket Council and till date, India haven’t received the silverware.
Since then, the relations between the two teams have only worsened. After Bangladesh was ousted from the T20 World Cup, the Pakistan government had announced that they will be boycotting the India match as a gesture of support for Bangladesh. After ICC and PCB had a meeting, Pakistan backtracked and agreed to play the match.
English (US) ·