very interesting analysis…
Win, then lose: An Indo-Pak jinx
Shankar Raghuraman
Sourav Ganguly with Inzamam-ul-Haq
West Indies might be ecstatic after Wednesday’s win and Pakistan downbeat, but the result was as good as pre-ordained. Check out history and you will find almost invariably that the victor in a Indo-Pak match loses the next match in tournaments.
India and Pakistan have met each other 27 times in tournaments involving three or more teams since the 1996 World Cup. On 16 of these occasions, the winner has gone on to play another major team in its next fixture in the tournament. And amazingly, on 14 of those occasions it has lost.
There are at least two explanations for this strange pattern. One is that a match between the two is so emotionally and physically draining that the winner is unable to recover before the next big match. The other is that India-Pak matches are so hyped up that the victor almost feels that it has won the tournament and tends to relax.
There are only two exceptions to the pattern. Both exceptions happened in the same year — 2000 — at the same venue — Sharjah — and not surprisingly the team beating the rule twice was Pakistan. Pakistan beat India in the Coca Cola Cup in March that year and went on to beat South Africa in its next match. And in June, Pakistan beat India again in the second Asia Cup and in its next match beat Sri Lanka.
Of the 14 other times, Pakistan had beaten India on 10 occasions only to lose its next big match of the tournament, while India had suffered a similar fate 4 times. These include, of course, India’s World Cup wins against Pakistan in 1996 and 1999.
If you check out the history of Indo-Pak matches you will find that almost invariably the victor in these matches lose the next match in tournaments. There are only 11 matches that we haven’t yet accounted for. Well, four of these were in the Silver Jubilee Independence Cup in Dhaka in 1998, where the only other team in the tournament was Bangladesh. Then there are two matches in the Pepsi Cup of 1999 which were the finals of the tournament.
Similarly, India and Pakistan played two matches against each other in the Coca Cola Cup in Sharjah in 1999 which were again the finals.
Finally, there are three occasions on which the winner of the India-Pak encounter went on to play one of the minnows in its next match, which obviously does not count.
