T20 World Cup 2024, IND vs PAK Toss: India’s perfect record when winning the toss against Pakistan

Cricket’s ‘glorious uncertainty’ comes to the fore most in the T20 format. Unlike, say, Test cricket, where the more accomplished team almost always prevails, the shorter game can often narrow the gulf in class between two sides. This is why a USA were able to shock Pakistan, and Papua New Guinea were able to give West Indies a real fright. But when it comes to India-Pakistan matches on the global stage, this uncertainty seems to exit the room. Such has been India’s dominance of Pakistan in the ODI World Cup – eight wins from eight matches – and T20 World Cup (six from seven, including a Bowl Out in Durban in 2007) that it seems almost a statistical anomaly.

For a generation, Pakistani fans taunted their Indian counterparts about Javed Miandad’s last-ball six at Sharjah in 1986. But the young Indian fan now has ripostes of his or her own. Back in 2007, in the inaugural World T20 final in Johannesburg, Misbah-ul-Haq’s attempt to scoop his way to glory off Joginder Sharma only found Sreesanth at short fine leg. Then, in October 2022, after India had needed an improbable 31 off 12 balls in front of a crowd of 90,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Virat Kohli hit Haris Rauf for consecutive sixes, including that shot back over the bowler’s head.

So, how much does the toss play a part in these results? Well, India have not lost any of the six T20Is in which they’ve won the toss against Pakistan. Each of their three losses, from 12 matches, have come when they were asked to bat first. Pakistan clinched their only World Cup win over India, in Dubai in 2021, when they chased down a target of 152 with 10 wickets and 13 balls to spare.

Of the seven T20 World Cup matches between the great rivals, India and Pakistan, five have been won by the side that called correctly at the toss. Once, in Colombo in 2012, India chased down a target of 129 after Pakistan chose to bat. And in Durban five years earlier, the game ended in a tie after Pakistan – who had won the toss – failed to score the one run they needed from the last two balls bowled by Sreesanth.