India and Pakistan players had refused to shake hands at last year’s acrimonious Asia Cup tournament<\/a> in the United Arab Emirates, which took place amid diplomatic and military tensions between the two neighbours.<\/p>\nIndia made a competitive 7-175 on a sticky pitch at R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In reply Pakistan was bowled out for 114 in 18 overs.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s game was the first time the teams have met since the Asia Cup, won by India.<\/p>\n
![\"Varun](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/39ff47679a6d8b30362c324fd439bbd5.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
India comfortably beat Pakistan again to qualify for the Super 8. (Getty Images: Robert Cianflone)<\/p>\n
In the lead-up to the match, Agha said he believed it was up to the Indian players to decide whether they would shake hands with his team before and after Sunday’s game.<\/p>\n
Yadav, for his part, had been noncommittal.<\/p>\n
“Why are you highlighting that?” he asked reporters on the eve of the game.<\/p>\n
“We are here to play cricket. We will play good cricket. We will take all those calls tomorrow. We will see tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Pakistan’s government considered not playing the match after the ICC kicked Bangladesh out of the World Cup for refusing to play matches in India, citing security concerns.<\/p>\n
Pakistan only agreed to play after intense discussions with the ICC.<\/p>\n
Political and military tensions have meant the two teams have not played a bilateral series for years.<\/p>\n
India has not travelled to Pakistan since 2008. Pakistan visited India for the 50-over World Cup in 2023 but has since played ICC tournaments at neutral venues.<\/p>\n
India has defeated Pakistan 13 times in the 17 T20 games they have played. It now also has an impressive 8-1 record in the nine T20 World Cup matches since the first edition in 2007.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India and Pakistan have declined to shake hands before and after the most-anticipated game of the T20 World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,1209,15299,85,48682],"class_list":{"0":"post-482402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-india","12":"tag-pakistan","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-t20-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}