Pakistan vs India - a rivalry that once brought fans in droves could fade into history

Pakistan and India continue to stand face to face, India with its lies, Pakistan with an unwavering stance that it will respond to any and all Indian aggression.

The situation has spilled over from the battlefield, with India demanding bans on Pakistani stars and Pakistan reciprocating by taking down all Indian movies from Pakistani screens and then the rivalry that once brought fans pouring was also seen being put up against the wall for execution. 

The Indian cricket board BCCI requested the ICC not to place India in the same group as Pakistan in international events.

"Keeping in mind that the [Indian] government has adopted a new strategy to isolate Pakistan and in view of the public sentiment in the country, we request ICC not to put India and Pakistan in the same pool of the multi-nation tournaments," the BCCI president Anurag Thakur was quoted by the Times of India.

Reacting to the BCCI stance the former ICC president Ehsan Mani criticized Thakur’s statements and has asked the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to push the ICC to bar India from hosting ICC events.

“The Indian Cricket Board President, with his immature and inflammatory statements, has given an opening to Pakistan to plead its case more effectively at the ICC meeting,” he said.

Mani termed Thakur’s actions to have brought disrepute to the game, “the ICC constitution clearly forbade any of its own officials or those of member countries to make statements that bring the game into disrepute and that is what Thakur has done,” the Indian Express quoted Ehsan Mani.

Mani has urged Pakistan to take up the matter in the upcoming ICC executive board meeting next week in Cape Town.

There was a time once, when a face off between Pakistan and India would draw crowds and pack stadiums. Whenever the two teams came out on the pitch the fans would come out in droves. Now it seems both countries may never even share the same field and the games already played will be all remains on the board as a testament of what was once the greatest cricketing rivalry. 

It will be a moment of sadness for Pakistani fans that the boys in green never beat India in a fifty-over world cup fixture, but on aggregate wins, Pakistan has the lead.

A snapshot of the Pakistan-India performance in Cricket

Ovais Jafar is a Multimedia Journalist, he tweets as @ovaisjafar