India-Pakistan in Same Group in T20 World Cup

India and Pakistan will play after 5 years in T20 cricket. They have been placed in the same group as the teams were picked on the basis of team rankings as of March 20, 2021

Team India has been clubbed together with Pakistan in the Super 12’s stage of the T20 World Cup which will be hosted by the BCCI in the UAE and Oman from October 17 to November 14. This has made cricket fans excited.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced the groupings for the event — which will be the first global cricket after the pandemic postponed the 2020 edition — in Muscat.

Due to the rankings as of March 20, 2021, India and Pakistan have found themselves in the same group. The two were kept in different groups for the 2020 edition, which was originally scheduled to be held in Australia but was postponed to 2022 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As far as India goes, they find themselves in probably the toughest of the two groups. With the pitches in the UAE expected to be on the slower side, their batting unit will be up against teams that have some of the best tweakers in the business.

It can even get worse, if Sri Lanka qualifies from Round 1 as Group A runners-up, which means all the sub-continent teams will be comprised in the same group, provided Bangladesh makes it to the Super 12’s as Group B winners.

BCCI secretary Jay Shah said both groups are “packed with sides that are highly competitive in the shortest format of the game.”

According to ICC’s acting chief executive Geoff Allardice, "Given the disruption caused by COVID-19, we selected the cutoff date as close as possible to the event to ensure we were able to include the maximum amount of cricket in the rankings which determine the groups."

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are among the eight teams in the qualifiers for the Super 12 stage of the tournament with Ireland, Netherlands, Namibia, Oman, Papua New Guinea and Scotland also competing.