Pakistan vs India: The Big Match With No Mistakes Allowed, and What Has Happened to the Rivalry Since
On 23 February 2025 Pakistan met India in Dubai needing to win to stay in their own tournament. They lost by six wickets. This plain-English guide retells that match, explains why the two countries no longer play on each other's soil, and follows a rivalry that had grown much colder by 2026.
About this article: It was prepared with the help of AI tools from public sources and is being reviewed by our editors. If you spot an error, please let us know so that we can correct it.
⚡ The short answer
The match was played at the Dubai International Stadium on Sunday, 23 February 2025. Pakistan, hosts of the Champions Trophy and already beaten once, had to win. They batted first and made 241, a total built too slowly to trouble a strong batting side. India chased it with ease. Virat Kohli finished unbeaten on exactly 100, hitting the winning runs to reach his century, and India won by six wickets with more than seven overs to spare. Pakistan were out of their own tournament within the week. In the eighteen months since, the two sides have met four more times. India has won them all, and the teams have stopped shaking hands.
- ✅ Result: India won by six wickets
- ✅ Pakistan 241; India 244 for 4
- ✅ Player of the match: Virat Kohli, 100 not out
- ⚠️ Since then: four more meetings, four Indian wins, no handshakes
Why “no mistakes allowed”
The headline this page once carried was written before the match. It was accurate.
Pakistan had opened the tournament four days earlier in Karachi and lost to New Zealand by a wide margin. In a group of four, with only two going through, a second defeat would almost certainly end their campaign. They were the hosts. They were the defending champions, having won the previous edition in 2017 by beating India in the final. And the opponent was the one that matters most.
So everything rode on one day, in a stadium more than a thousand kilometres from the country that was supposed to be staging the tournament.
Pakistan were hosts of a tournament whose biggest match they had to play abroad, against a team that would not visit, needing a win to survive. It is hard to think of a heavier afternoon in the country’s cricket.
The match
Pakistan bat
Pakistan’s captain, Mohammad Rizwan, won the toss and batted. The pitch was slow, the kind on which runs must be worked for.
- The openers began brightly, then both fell in quick succession, one of them to a direct-hit run-out.
- Rizwan and Saud Shakeel then set about rebuilding. They put on a century partnership. But they took a long time over it. For the best part of twenty overs the scoring rate barely moved.
- When Rizwan was bowled for 46, and Shakeel was caught soon after for 62, the innings had neither the runs nor the wickets in hand for a late surge.
- India’s spinners, Kuldeep Yadav above all, and the medium pace of Hardik Pandya took wickets at regular intervals.
- A late flurry from the lower order carried the total to 241, all out in the final over.
It was perhaps forty runs short of what was needed. More damaging than the total was the manner: close to half the balls Pakistan faced produced no run at all.
India chase
India’s reply was as calm as Pakistan’s innings had been anxious.
- The captain, Rohit Sharma, gave the innings a fast start before he was bowled by a superb delivery from Shaheen Shah Afridi.
- Shubman Gill made a fluent 46.
- Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer then took the game away with a partnership of more than a hundred. Iyer made a half-century.
- Kohli, who had been short of runs for months, paced his innings perfectly. With India needing two to win and Kohli on 96, he struck a boundary to reach his hundred and finish the match.
| Pakistan | India | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 241 all out | 244 for 4 |
| Top scores | Saud Shakeel 62; Mohammad Rizwan 46 | Virat Kohli 100 not out; Shreyas Iyer 56; Shubman Gill 46 |
| Best bowling | Shaheen Shah Afridi, two wickets | Kuldeep Yadav, three wickets |
| Balls to spare | — | 45 |
It was Kohli’s 51st century in one-day internationals, the most by anyone, and in the course of it he passed 14,000 runs in the format faster than any batsman before him. He has made a habit of his best innings against Pakistan.
The end of Pakistan’s tournament
The next day New Zealand beat Bangladesh. That result sent New Zealand and India through and eliminated both the others. Pakistan’s last match, against Bangladesh in Rawalpindi, was washed out without a ball bowled.
The hosts and holders finished their own tournament without a win. India went on to take the trophy, beating New Zealand in the final, which, because India had qualified, was also played in Dubai.
Why the match was in Dubai
A tournament hosted by Pakistan held its biggest game, and its final, in another country. The reason is political.
No tours since 2008
India’s cricket team has not played in Pakistan since 2008. After the attacks in Mumbai that year, which India blamed on a group based in Pakistan, the Indian government stopped all bilateral cricket. Pakistan toured India for a short series at the end of 2012. Since then the two have met only at tournaments involving other countries.
The “hybrid model”
When Pakistan was awarded the 2025 Champions Trophy, India’s cricket board said its government would not permit the team to travel. Pakistan’s board said the whole event must be held in Pakistan. The stand-off lasted months.
The compromise, reached in December 2024, was this.
| Arrangement | |
|---|---|
| India’s matches in the 2025 Champions Trophy | Played in Dubai |
| Semi-final and final, if India qualified | Also in Dubai |
| Pakistan’s matches in tournaments hosted by India, up to 2027 | Played at a neutral venue |
| Compensation to Pakistan | The right to host a further women’s tournament |
So the rule now runs both ways. Neither team crosses the border. When India hosted the women’s World Cup in 2025 and co-hosted the men’s Twenty20 World Cup in 2026, Pakistan played in Sri Lanka.
💡 Tip: who decides whether the teams play?
Not the players, and not really the cricket boards. India’s board says it follows the advice of the Indian government on any contact with Pakistan. Pakistan’s board is headed by a chairman chosen by the prime minister, who since 2024 has also been a federal minister. When the two governments are not speaking, the two teams meet only where a world body obliges them to, on neutral ground. Cricket between them is foreign policy by other means.
The rivalry in numbers
| Format or event | Pakistan wins | India wins |
|---|---|---|
| All one-day internationals | More than 70 | About 58 |
| One-day World Cups | 0 | 8 |
| Twenty20 World Cups | 1 | 7 |
| Champions Trophy, before 2025 | 3 | 2 |
| Champions Trophy, including 2025 | 3 | 3 |
Two things stand out.
Pakistan lead overall. Across the whole history of one-day cricket, Pakistan have won more of these matches than India. Most of that lead was built in the 1980s and 1990s, in Sharjah and elsewhere, by the sides of Imran Khan, Javed Miandad and Wasim Akram.
India dominate the big occasions. At World Cups, where the pressure is greatest, Pakistan’s record is dreadful: one win in sixteen across the two formats.
The Champions Trophy had been Pakistan’s exception. Their greatest modern victory came in the 2017 final at The Oval, where they beat India by 180 runs. The 2025 defeat ended that small consolation.
Why Pakistan keep losing this fixture
Opinion, not fact. These are the explanations most often offered.
- A widening gap in resources. India’s cricket board earns many times what Pakistan’s does. That money buys coaching, analysis, facilities and a domestic league in which Indian players face the world’s best every year. Pakistani players are shut out of that league.
- The method. Pakistan’s batting in one-day cricket has been built on caution. India, like most leading sides, score faster and bat deeper.
- The weight of the occasion. Indian players speak of the match as one game among many. Pakistani players are told from childhood that it is the only one that counts.
- Instability. Pakistan changed captain, coach and selectors repeatedly in these years. India’s leadership was settled.
- Spin. India’s slow bowlers have controlled the middle of the innings in almost every recent meeting.
The Dubai match of February 2025 showed all five.
What has happened since
The eighteen months after that match were the worst in the history of the two countries’ sporting relations, because they were among the worst in their political relations.
April and May 2025
In April 2025 gunmen killed tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan, which denied any role. In early May the two countries fought for four days with missiles, drones and aircraft before a ceasefire. Both countries’ domestic cricket leagues were interrupted.
The Asia Cup, September 2025
The two sides were drawn together in the Asia Cup in the United Arab Emirates, and met three times in a fortnight. India won all three, including the final.
What was remembered was not the cricket.
- At the toss of the first match India’s captain did not shake hands with Pakistan’s. After India won, the Indian batsmen walked straight off without the customary handshakes.
- Pakistan’s management complained formally about India’s conduct and about the match referee.
- The same happened in the second and third matches.
- After the final, India’s players declined to accept the trophy from the head of the Asian Cricket Council, because he is also the chairman of Pakistan’s cricket board and a minister in its government. The presentation was abandoned. Two months later the trophy was reported to be still sitting in the council’s office in Dubai.
India’s captain said his team’s stance was a matter of solidarity with the victims of the April attack and with the armed forces. Pakistan’s board called the behaviour unsporting and against the spirit of the game.
The women’s World Cup, October 2025
The two women’s teams met in Colombo. India won. The captains did not shake hands.
The Twenty20 World Cup, February 2026
| Date | 15 February 2026 |
| Venue | Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| India | 175 for 7 |
| Pakistan | 114 all out |
| Result | India won by 61 runs |
| Top score | Ishan Kishan (India), 77 from 40 balls |
The build-up was stranger than the match. Two weeks earlier Pakistan’s government had announced that its team had been told not to play the fixture, as a gesture of support for Bangladesh, which was in a dispute of its own with India over the tournament. In the end the match went ahead. The captains again did not shake hands at the toss.
The record since February 2025
| Date | Event | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 23 February 2025 | Champions Trophy, Dubai | India won by six wickets |
| 14 September 2025 | Asia Cup, group stage | India won |
| 21 September 2025 | Asia Cup, second stage | India won |
| 28 September 2025 | Asia Cup final | India won by five wickets |
| 15 February 2026 | Twenty20 World Cup, Colombo | India won by 61 runs |
Five matches, five defeats.
⚠️ Sport and enmity
There was a time when cricket was the one place India and Pakistan could meet without rancour. Players from the two sides were friends; crowds applauded the opposition; a tour by one country to the other was treated as an act of peace. That has gone, at least for now. The refusal to shake hands is a small thing in itself. But it marks the point at which the game stopped being a refuge from the quarrel and became part of it. Supporters on both sides who remember the earlier spirit are entitled to regret that.
The players in the middle
It is easy to forget that the men on the field did not choose any of this.
For decades players from the two countries got on well. They shared dressing rooms in English county cricket, swapped bats and advice, and spoke warmly of one another in retirement. Indian batsmen have said that Pakistani fast bowlers taught them more than any coach. In the first season of India’s franchise league, in 2008, Pakistani players took part and were among its stars. They have not been allowed back since.
Not everyone in either country approved of what happened in 2025. Voices in both, former players among them, said publicly that the game’s courtesies should be kept apart from politics.
The current generation has grown up without tours, without shared leagues and, now, without the small rituals of respect. If the two governments ever decide to let the teams visit each other again, the players will have to learn a friendship their predecessors took for granted.
What the rivalry is worth
One reason the matches continue at all, when the governments will hardly speak, is money.
- A match between India and Pakistan draws the largest television audience in the sport, running to hundreds of millions.
- Advertising rates for those few hours are the highest of any cricket broadcast.
- Tournament organisers arrange the draw so that the two meet, and sell the broadcasting rights on that expectation.
- Tickets sell out in minutes at many times their face value.
For the world body and its broadcasters the fixture is the single most valuable asset in cricket. That is why, whatever is said in Delhi or Islamabad, a way is always found to play it, somewhere.
Pakistan’s board depends on its share of that revenue far more than India’s does. It is one of the few cards Pakistan holds, and one reason the threat of a boycott, though made, has not been carried out.
What Pakistan would need to change
Former players and coaches have offered much the same list for years.
| Change | Why |
|---|---|
| Keep the same captain, coach and selectors for a full cycle | Nothing can be built in six months |
| Bat with more intent in the middle overs | A total of 240 no longer wins matches |
| Produce and trust spin bowlers | The middle of the innings is where these games are decided |
| Fix domestic cricket and leave it fixed | Players arrive in the national side unprepared |
| Treat this fixture as one match | Fear of losing it produces exactly the caution that loses it |
✅ Key point
The match of 23 February 2025 was billed as one in which Pakistan could afford no mistakes. They did not make one great mistake. They made many small ones, mostly of caution, and against this opponent that was enough. Since then the result has been repeated four times, and the atmosphere around the fixture has soured in step with relations between the two states. For Pakistan the cricketing problem can be solved by Pakistanis. The other problem cannot be solved by cricketers at all.
Words used in this article
| Term | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Champions Trophy | A one-day tournament among the world’s top eight teams |
| One-day international | A 50-over match between national sides |
| Twenty20 | A 20-over match |
| Chase | Batting second in pursuit of a target |
| Not out | Still batting when the innings ends |
| Century | A hundred runs by one batsman |
| Hybrid model | The arrangement under which India and Pakistan play at neutral venues when either is the host |
| Bilateral series | A series between two countries arranged by their boards, not part of a tournament |
| Neutral venue | A ground in a third country |
| Toss | The coin flip that decides who bats first |
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2008 | India’s last visit to Pakistan; bilateral cricket ends after the Mumbai attacks |
| Late 2012 | Pakistan’s last bilateral series in India |
| June 2017 | Pakistan beat India in the Champions Trophy final |
| December 2024 | The “hybrid model” is agreed |
| 19 February 2025 | Pakistan lose the tournament’s opening match to New Zealand |
| 23 February 2025 | India beat Pakistan in Dubai |
| 24 February 2025 | Pakistan are eliminated |
| 9 March 2025 | India win the Champions Trophy |
| May 2025 | Four days of military conflict |
| September 2025 | Three Asia Cup meetings; no handshakes; the trophy dispute |
| 15 February 2026 | India win at the Twenty20 World Cup in Colombo |
For the politics that surround the cricket, read our guide to Pakistan’s politics.
Follow the stories behind the headlines
PoliticsPK explains who is who, how the system works and what changes, without the noise.
More in Politics Explained Politics Explained Latest from PoliticsPK
Frequently asked questions
❓ Who won Pakistan vs India in the Champions Trophy 2025?
India, by six wickets, at the Dubai International Stadium on 23 February 2025.
❓ What were the scores?
Pakistan made 241 all out. India replied with 244 for 4, with 45 balls to spare.
❓ Who was player of the match?
Virat Kohli, who scored 100 not out from 111 balls, his 51st century in one-day internationals.
❓ Why was the match played in Dubai and not in Pakistan?
India’s government did not permit its team to travel to Pakistan. Under a compromise, India played all its matches in Dubai.
❓ Were Pakistan knocked out?
Yes. They had already lost to New Zealand, and were eliminated the day after the India match.
❓ When did India last tour Pakistan?
In 2008. The two countries have not played a bilateral series since Pakistan’s short tour of India in late 2012.
❓ Why did the teams not shake hands at the Asia Cup?
India’s captain declined the customary handshakes in September 2025, citing solidarity with the victims of an attack in Kashmir in April and with India’s armed forces. Pakistan’s board protested.
❓ What happened when they met at the 2026 Twenty20 World Cup?
India won by 61 runs in Colombo on 15 February 2026, after making 175 for 7 and bowling Pakistan out for 114.
❓ What is Pakistan’s overall record against India?
Pakistan have won more one-day internationals between the two overall, but India have won nearly all their meetings at World Cups.
Sources
- ESPNcricinfo, Pakistan v India, Champions Trophy, Dubai, 23 February 2025 — match page.
- Geo News, “Asia Cup 2025: Will Pakistani and Indian skippers share trophy moment ahead of final?” — September 2025.
- Geo Super, “ACC sets early November window for Asia Cup Trophy handover to India” — 2025.
- Wisden, India v Pakistan, Twenty20 World Cup, 15 February 2026 — scorecard.
- Gulf News, “T20 World Cup: India-Pakistan set for Colombo classic — key insights” — February 2026.
- The Free Press Journal, “IND vs PAK, Champions Trophy 2025: Pakistan in must-win territory as they collide with India in high-stakes clash” — February 2025; a preview of the match.
- International Cricket Council — for official results and tournament arrangements.
