NASSAU — The number that defined India’s group stage game against Pakistan at the 2024 T20 World Cup was six. Six runs. India’s bowlers, with Jasprit Bumrah the defining presence across the innings, held Pakistan to 159 for 8 chasing 120. The margin flattered Pakistan slightly: India had restricted them to a chase they never looked like completing once Bumrah had finished his opening spell.
That match at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium on June 9, 2024 set the tone for what India-Pakistan cricket would look like across the 2024-26 cycle. India’s ICC record against Pakistan in this period is uninterrupted: every time the two sides have met in a global tournament, India have won. The T20 World Cup in 2024. The Champions Trophy in 2025. The pattern is not recent — it stretches back to the 2021 T20 World Cup and the 2022 edition — but the 2024-26 cycle has confirmed it as a structural reality rather than a run of form.
The Nassau game was won primarily by Bumrah. On a pitch that was offering uneven bounce and considerable assistance to pace, Bumrah’s six overs produced figures that reduced Pakistan’s chase before it had a platform. Virat Kohli’s 76 off 59 balls on a difficult surface provided the target. The combination of Kohli’s batting and Bumrah’s bowling — the defining partnership of Indian cricket across ICC events since 2019 — did what it has done in nearly every high-stakes game it has appeared in.
The Champions Trophy in 2025 followed a similar pattern. India and Pakistan met in the group stage. India won. The scoreline was different; the result was not. Pakistan’s batting in that tournament was again unable to find the answers that India’s bowling attack posed. By the time the knockout rounds arrived, India were through and Pakistan’s campaign was over. India went on to win the tournament.
What makes the India-Pakistan scorecard in ICC cricket so lopsided is not merely that India wins. It is how they win. Pakistan have not beaten India in an ICC event — World Cups, Champions Trophies, Asia Cups against full ICC-scheduled opponents — in a span that now covers six consecutive meetings. Each defeat has prompted debate within Pakistani cricket about their approach to these games. The tactical and psychological adjustments made between tournaments have, so far, produced no different result.
The 2024 T20 World Cup group game also carried a specific sub-story: the venue. Nassau County is not a traditional cricket ground; it was built for the tournament on a temporary basis. Pitches that behaved unusually, conditions that neither side had prepared for in that configuration, and an atmosphere that the ICC described as one of the largest cricket crowds ever assembled in the United States. In those circumstances, India’s ability to adapt — and Pakistan’s inability to do the same — was the defining factor.
India’s broader 2024-26 position is shaped not only by Pakistan results but by the full ICC picture. The T20 World Cup was won in Barbados. The Champions Trophy was won in 2025. The WTC cycle has been more difficult — India sit fifth at 48.15 per cent after losses to Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and to South Africa in the 2026 Test series. But white-ball cricket, where India’s depth is greatest and where ICC titles carry most weight in terms of public and commercial significance, has continued to deliver.
According to the ICC Men’s T20I team rankings, India remain among the top-ranked sides in the shortest format following their unbeaten run against Pakistan in this ICC cycle. Bilateral cricket between India and Pakistan has not been scheduled due to the political and administrative complications governing the relationship between the two boards. ICC events remain the only context in which the two sides meet competitively.
India’s 2023 ODI World Cup win over Pakistan, with Kohli’s century deciding a game at the Narendra Modi Stadium, sits directly before the period this scorecard covers. The continuity from 2023 through 2024 and 2025 is not coincidental. India’s core structure — Bumrah with the ball, Kohli and Rohit in the batting order when available, Hardik Pandya as the all-round option — has been the consistent factor across every ICC encounter with Pakistan in this run.
The BCCI’s development pipeline also deserves acknowledgement in this context. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s debut at 15 years and 99 days against England in 2026 signals that India’s next generation of white-ball cricketers is being introduced with a long-term ICC tournament schedule in mind. Pakistan’s equivalent pipeline has produced talent — Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi — but the translation from individual-player quality to collective tournament performance has been the persistent gap.
The next scheduled ICC event in which India and Pakistan would meet is the T20 World Cup cycle following 2024. Until then, the scorecard between them in 2024-26 reads as it has across the broader 2021-26 stretch: India’s bowling has always found a way to limit Pakistan’s chase, and India’s batting has always found a way to put a score on the board. Six runs in Nassau is the margin that represents this entire era of the rivalry most accurately. Small enough to suggest contest; large enough, given the context, to confirm the result was never really in doubt.
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