India-Pakistan cricket rivalry is one of the intense sports rivalries in the world. The tense border relation between both neighbouring resulted in India vs Pakistan sports clash. The Indo-Pakistani Wars, and the Kashmir conflict, laid the foundations for the emergence of an intense sporting rivalry between the two nations who had shared a common cricketing heritage.
It was not the same earlier, the cricket boards of both countries have shared a strong friendship bond for nearly 25 years.
The friendship between India and Pakistan in cricket started on 26 June 1983 in London, just a day after India became world champion for the first time. The then BCCI President NKP Salve and PCB President Noor Khan met over lunch at Lord's. Salve was the Union Minister at that time and Noor Khan was a retired Air Chief Marshal of Pakistan. There both of them decided to come together in cricket, forgetting the old enmity as their aim was common, to break the dominance of England and Australia.
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India-Pakistan came together, the equation of power in the politics of international cricket started changing. India and Pakistan got the joint hosting of the World Cup to be held in 1987. For the first time, the World Cup took place outside England.
All this was happening when the relations between the two countries were continuously deteriorating. Yet in international cricket, India and Pakistan supported each other in every need. The PCB voted in favor of the BCCI on almost all occasions.
Later, other submissive countries, including – Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe came into India's camp. From here, India's dominance in the ICC also started increasing.
India and Pakistan also hosted the 1996 World Cup. 1996 World Cup was hosted by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka together. Teams from Australia and West Indies refused to go to Sri Lanka citing security reasons. Then the hosts took a unique step to assure the world that Sri Lanka is a safe place. A joint team of India and Pakistan was formed which toured Sri Lanka.
In 1999, questions were raised on Shoaib Akhtar's action, Dalmiya, then the President of the ICC helped the PCB in defending Akhtar and saved his career.
But in 2008, India and Pakistan became the biggest rival of each other, after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack. It was believed that the terrorist attack was backed by Pakistan, because of this India broke bilateral cricket ties with Pakistan.
It was definitely a loss for Pakistan and the country is still dealing with it. After this break-up, Pakistan lost the hosting of the 2011 World Cup. To date teams like New Zealand and England have refused to play in the country because of security reasons.