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Last week, Indian pace ace Mohammed Shami had slammed former Pakistan cricketers for their slanderous—and occasionally absurd comments—about his bowling for the past couple of years. Some very prominent players like ex-Pakistan cricket captain Inzamam ul Haq have suggested that Indian bowlers were getting a lot of assistance from the ball because “a lot of serious work was done on it before”.

Inzi was not the only one to imply that Indians were tampering with the ball. Former Pakistan cricketer Hasan Raza, after India’s game against Sri Lanka in the World Cup 2023 match, had said that “ICC or the BCCI were giving Indian bowlers different and suspicious balls in the second innings.”

Shami had slammed such insinuations in a recent interview.

“Jealousy wala scene hai, aur kuch nahi hai… mujhe nahi lagta yeh koi sense wali baat hai. Apna perform nahi hota toh sab fatichar ho jaata hai. Jab doosra perform karta hai tab aapko mirchi lagti hai (This is pure jealousy. There’s no sense in such comments. When your own team cannot perform, you think the rest of the world is bad. You feel jealous because another team is performing well),” Shami said on Aap Ki Adalat when asked about the various comments made by former Pakistan cricketers about Indian pacers getting swing and reverse swing easily.

Shami was asked about a particular claim which originated from the other side of the border that there was a chip in a ball that Shami has used to get wickets in a match.

“These are the people like the umpires who bring the ball when the ball is selected. People don't actually know and I think this is a case of jealousy, nothing else. Because when we perform, when we do better, the person in front gets jealous on their own. So, I don't think there's any sense in this. These players saying this have played well at a good level, nationally, but if you say this on national television, I think after that, the public shouldn't listen to them either,” Shami said.

Former Pakistan cricketer Basit Ali has slammed the Pakistan team management for refusing to address the media before the game against India in the Asia Cup on Sunday, saying "These guys don’t know how to play mind games."

Ali said he was surprised that Pakistan didn’t do the press conference.

“This is the wrong attitude. So you wont do PC after match also or won’t do before? Karenge na? The leader (Salman Ali Agha) should have come and could have said if the handshake question was posed, that we won't have a handshake now. These guys don’t know how to play mind games," Ali said on Ary News.

“Who is the guilty party here? Suryakumar didn’t shake hands, na? Then why Agha isn’t turning up for the press conference and acting as if he and Pakistan are the guilty party?” Basit said.

For the second time in two Pakistan games, the team opted to cancel its pre-match press conference. Former Pakistan cricketer Kamran Akmal was one of those unhappy with the move, saying on Ary News that this was the wrong move from Pakistan. “This is the thing that needs to be faced. Show confidence, and come to meet the media. Players should have come. It will be known that we haven’t fallen in confidence and we shall do well. Salman Ali Agha should come with courage and face the media. If the captain goes on backfoot, the team also will go similarly. It tells me that there is no confidence, how will the team play the match?” Akmal said.

He added: “If you had put your views across, then the pressure would have shifted to the Indian team. Their media would have questioned them. This was a great chance, he could have come, talked about the previous incident or talk about their preparation.”

Tanishq Vaddi analyses

Shaheen’s first ball in most games is telegraphed; it is going to be a fuller one which swings in, be it a right-hander or a left-hander. Who could forget 2021 when he was boomeranging the ball into the Indian batters? Last Sunday, Abhishek Sharma was quite up to the task. He anticipated the fuller one and stepped out of the crease and pushed it for a boundary down the ground. The follow-up from Afridi was a wide one, which Abhishek caressed over for a six.

Abhishek is traditionally a player who stays in the crease and prefers to slap the ball from there. Rewind the clock to the final of the 2024 IPL final when he was stuck at the crease. Mitchell Starc bowled a screamer of a delivery when the left-hander tried to play the Aussie from the crease and was beaten all ends up for swing, and his off-stump went cartwheeling.

Afridi is a bowler who can deliver those unplayable deliveries, and it is probably the premeditation of Abhishek that disrupted the length of the Pakistan ace pacer. And once Afridi had to pull his length back and move away from his strength, it is probably half the strength of Pakistan's bowling that was negated. However, with the skill set Shaheen has and the experience under his belt, he will come up with more trickery today to counter Abhishek dancing down the track when the ball is swinging for the first few overs.

It may be argued that the Indian top-order may have faced a needless shuffle in the lead-up to the competition with Shubman Gill's return to the squad after a year's break. Leaving the vice-captain on the bench is unheard of and therefore Gill was inevitably slotted to take the opening slot alongside his long-time buddy Abhishek Sharma. While teams like Australia and England have adopted to explosive opening pairs with carnage unleashed from ball one at both ends, India have put a certain check on that approach by pushing Sanju Samson down the order, adopting the assurance of Gill instead.

However, the 26-year-old has not had the best of starts to the series, with scores of 20*, 10 and 5. In Abu Dhabi two nights ago, Gill was undone by a scorcher of a delivery from Oman's left-arm seamer Shah Faisal, exposing the huge bat-pad gap from the Indian opener while attempting a booming cover drive. With a set of ordinary scores up against his name, Gill will feel the heat to silence his critics in Dubai.

Tanishq Vaddi writes..

Who will Pakistan name in their sheets at 8:30 PM at the toss? Oops, 7:30 PM is the official time. When they presented their team sheet at 8:30 against the UAE in their final group game, they had Haris Rauf and Kushdil Shah in their lineup. Whether they go with a similar combination against India on Sunday is something to be seen.

The pro of going with the combination they have picked up for the game against the UAE is that they will have more experience in their attack. Rauf and Kushdil are seasoned campaigners and will have the know-how to deal with situations in high-pressure games such as these.

The con of it is that Pakistan will lack the X-factor. Although Muqeem did not have a good game, he is a bowler India has not seen much of. If anything, the past suggests Indian batters are quite kind in gifting their wickets away to bowlers who are new on the scene. As per Rauf, a bowler like him is always an asset, but playing both Muqeem and Rauf will significantly weaken the Pakistan batting and take out that all-rounder spot of either Kushdil or Faheem Ashraf.

The last time India and Pakistan squared off in the Super 4s of an Asia Cup was two years ago, when the 2023 Asia Cup was still being played in the ODI format. India were asked to bat first, and despite rain playing spoilsport, the Indian batting order had plundered runs at will, with Virat Kohli and KL Rahul breaking the record for India’s highest ever partnership in an Asia Cup match. The Kohli and Rahul partnership stood unbeaten on 233 off 194 balls.

Kohli was not out on 122 off 94 balls at end of innings while Rahul stayed unbeaten on 111 off 106. India gave Pakistan a target of 357 to chase. It was a chase they would fall miles short, 228 runs short, in fact. It was Kuldeep Yadav who finished with figures of 5/25 in just eight overs as Pakistan were bundled out for a paltry 128.

Abhishek Sharma has now gone past 30 in his five successive outings since the IPL 2025 season, but never over and above into the 40s and beyond. The consistency factor takes a whole new definition in this dashing Punjab opener's case. A license has been handed, and Abhishek is wielding his weapon like no other Indian opener has ever done in the last 18 years of T20I cricket. His strike rates since his debut are nearly nudging 200. He is the only man in all of T20 cricket to scale a 200-strike rate while recording at least 1000 runs since last year.

Abhishek's manic rise has been attributed to his key discussions with West Indies legend Brian Lara, on whom his game and fluidic bat-swing has been compared to. Read Sandip G's piece on how Abhishek incorporated Lara’s advice to become the heartbeat of India’s T20 approach

An interesting throwback

Back in the day when tensions between India and Pakistan were not as high as right now, a famous tale from the sporting ties between the two nations says that Sunil Gavaskar had postponed his plan to retire from Tests after the England series during a lunch with Imran Khan in London. “I got the opportunity to reach 10,000 runs in Test cricket only because of Imran. He and I went with a friend to an Italian restaurant for lunch in London. I told him that this is my last series. ‘No no Pakistan is coming to India and I want to beat India with you playing in it. I don’t want to beat India without you, it won’t be the same,’ he told me,” Gavaskar once revealed.

Pakistan's dawdling with the bat last week was an unpleasant sight in more ways than one. Squeezing past the 100-run mark, Pakistan wouldn't have made it past 120 if not for Shaheen Afridi's slate of lusty strikes. Staggeringly, the left-arm pacer has arguably been the best batter for the side throughout the tournament.

India spin legend R Ashwin has thereby placed a request ahead of the Super 4 contest to Salman Agha and his boy, 'Do not bat first in Dubai'.

“One request to Pakistan – please don’t bat first because of the pressure of the contest. By batting first, you make it a no-contest straightaway. By getting bowled out for 150, you are making the second half unwatchable," Ashwin said on his YouTube channel on match eve.

In May this year, right after 26 lives were lost in the Pahalgam terror attack, India head coach Gautam Gambhir was asked if India should be playing Pakistan in cricket tournaments.

“My personal answer to this is absolutely no. Till all this [terrorism] doesn't stop, there should not be anything between India and Pakistan,” Gambhir had said in May while speaking at an event in Delhi.

"Ultimately, this is [the] government's decision whether we play them or not," Gambhir said. "I have said this before also, no cricket match or Bollywood or any other interaction is more important than the life of Indian soldiers and Indian citizens. Matches will keep happening, movies will be made, singers will continue to perform, but nothing comes close to losing a loved one in your family.

"This is not up to me, it's not in my jurisdiction, this is for the BCCI and, more importantly, the government to decide whether we should play them or not. Whatever decision they make, we should be absolutely fine with it and not politicise it."

But when India played against Pakistan earlier in the Asia Cup, which was the first time the two teams were facing off after the Pahalgam terror attack, Gambhir had given a pep talk to the team. India’s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate had revealed that Gambhir addressed this issue in the dressing room.

“We obviously are aware of the sentiments and the strong feelings. And Gauti's (Gambhir's) message has just been very professional, about not worrying about things that are not in our control," India’s assistant coach said in the pre-match press conference. “You have to put those sentiments and emotions behind you. It's actually something addressed in the team meeting today. So we're aware of people's feelings. At the same time, we would put these aside and focus on the game.”

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