KARACHI - Test captain Shan Masood expressed his desire to play a Test match against India, saying it would be an honour for him to lead Pakistan against arch-rivals.
Pakistan and India have not played a Test since 2007-08 and a bilateral series in any format since 2012-13 due to the long-standing political tensions between the two neighbouring countries. The fierce rivals, however, only came face to face in multi-national events like Asia Cup and ICC World Cups.
They last met in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2024 at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, which witnessed a mammoth audience of around 130,000 while their T20 World Cup 2022 tie saw around 94,000 spectators filling the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).“My greatest memory has been playing India in the 2022 T20 World Cup at the MCG – it was around 94,000 people and that was surreal,” said Shan in an interview with Wisden Cricket Monthly.
“If we have a Test match in Pakistan or in India, even the Ahmedabad ground, or we play in Pakistan or in a neutral venue, I reckon an India v Pakistan match could sell out any venue in the world. It’d be great.“You want to play the best teams in the world and India is certainly one of the best, especially when it comes to Test cricket. We just saw a very exciting India versus England series. I would love for that (India v Pakistan) to happen. It’d be a great honour to lead Pakistan against India,” he added.
Notably, India made it to the World Test Championship (WTC) final in both editions, but Pakistan could not and thus the cricket fans’ crave to witness a Test match between the two arch-rivals after a gap of almost 16 years, remained standstill.
But Pakistan captain Shan Masood is banking on the possibility of a Pakistan-India WTC Final, stating‘there’s always a case’.“At the moment it doesn’t look likely, but you never know. There’s always a case for a World Test Championship final. That would be great,” Shan added.
“But we have some work to do. We need to win probably all of our home series and get some points away but we’re still in a decent position.“We have to take it series by series. There’s eight months to go before our next Test match so there’s still some thinking to do in terms of how we want to approach that,” he asserted.