This analysis starts in 2003-04, and that’s not an arbitrary choice. It’s the moment Pakistan cricket changed.

Wasim Akram retired in 2003. Waqar Younis retired right after the 2003 World Cup. Saqlain Mushtaq quit in 2004. After Pakistan’s group-stage exit from the 2003 World Cup, the PCB sacked Akram, Waqar, Saqlain, Abdul Razzaq and Azhar Mahmood in one go. The generation that defined Pakistan cricket, the generation built around the most feared bowling attack in the world walked out the door inside 18 months.

Pakistan’s identity, going back to Imran, had always been bowling. Akram and Waqar were the most destructive new-ball pair of the 1990s. Saqlain invented the doosra. Shoaib Akhtar held the speed record. Pakistan didn’t out-bat sides but they out-bowled them, and they did it with bowlers who would have walked into any all-time XI.

Since 2004, Pakistan has produced more bowlers. They have not produced bowlers in that calibre. Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir had the talent but lost years to spot-fixing bans. Shaheen Afridi has been close, and at his 2021-22 peak was as good as anyone in the world, but injuries and form have taken him in and out of the side. Haris Rauf is a death-overs specialist, not a Wasim-Waqar successor. The conveyor belt that defined Pakistan cricket more than anything else, made India vs Pakistan a real contest has slowed down and never fully restarted.

This post tracks what’s happened to the cricket since.

The headline first

The win-loss record is the part of this story that gets cited most often, so let’s get it out of the way.

Format	Matches	India	Pakistan	Last Pakistan win
ODI (2003-26)	46	27	18	June 2017 Champions Trophy final
T20I (2007-26)	17	13	3	September 2022 Asia Cup

India leads both formats. More relevantly, Pakistan haven’t won an ODI against India in almost 9 years and haven’t won a T20I in over 3. Across both formats combined, India has won 13 of the last 15 decided matches. And the two teams haven’t played a bilateral series since January 2013. Every meeting in the last 13 years has been at an ICC tournament or Asia Cup.

That’s the surface. The more interesting question is where on the field the gap has opened up.

Where the gap is widening: ODIs

A 50-over match has three phases. Powerplay (overs 1-10), middle (11-40), death (41-50). The gap looks different in each, and the part of the game that’s actually broken isn’t the part you’d guess.

The intuitive answer is the death overs. India scores at 10.1 runs per over in the death against Pakistan in 2023-26. Pakistan scores at 5.0. A 5.1 RPO chasm which is almost a doubling. Looks like death-overs hitting is where the rivalry has ended.

That answer is wrong, or at least misleading. The death-overs gap is a downstream symptom of damage that’s already been done.

The real story is in the middle overs. Look at the wickets:

Era	India wkts lost (overs 1-40)	Pakistan wkts lost (overs 1-40)	Gap
2003-12	4.5	4.8	+0.2
2013-17	5.4	6.1	+0.7
2018-22	1.7	5.7	+4.0
2023-26	3.0	7.0	+4.0

By the time the death overs start, Pakistan has lost 7 wickets on average. India has lost 3. Pakistan is walking into overs 41-50 with the tail at the crease. India is walking in with four wickets in hand and top-order batters still set.

Middle-overs run-rate tells the same story:

Era	India RPO (overs 11-40)	Pakistan RPO (overs 11-40)	Gap
2003-12	5.3	5.3	0.0
2013-17	4.5	4.6	-0.1
2018-22	6.2	5	+1.2
2023-26	5.7	4.3	+1.4

For roughly fifteen years, India and Pakistan scored at exactly the same rate through the middle of an ODI. Since 2018, the gap has been 1.2-1.4 runs per over. Pakistan running 50-odd runs short of India by the end of over 40, with several more wickets gone. The combined effect by the end of over 40:

Era	India at over 40	Pakistan at over 40	Gap
2003-12	219/4	209/4-5	+10 runs
2018-22	248/2	163/5-6	+85 runs, +3-4 wickets
2023-26	237/3	185/6-7	+52 runs, +3-4 wickets

Pakistan now enters the last ten overs with the equivalent of a tail-end batting unit chasing what is already a hopeless score. Of course they don’t accelerate. There’s nobody left to do it. Their “5 RPO at the death” is what you’d expect from one set batter shepherding two number-nines through 10 overs, because that’s frequently what it is.

When Pakistan does reach the death with their top order intact (≤5 wickets down), their death-overs run rate climbs to roughly 6.5-7 which is still slower than India’s 10, but not catastrophically so. The problem isn’t that Pakistan can’t hit at the death. The problem is they’re rarely there to try.

So the death-overs RPO gap is real, but it’s mostly a measurement of a battle that was already lost in the middle. India batters wear Pakistan down through overs 11-40 with steady accumulation and very few wickets. Pakistan batters lose three or four through the middle and never recover. The death overs are where the scorecard ends up and not where the match was decided.

Where the gap is widening: T20Is

The T20I picture is different. Here the gap has opened up at the start of innings rather than the end.

Powerplay (overs 1-6) — average score after 6 overs:

Era	India PP score	Pakistan PP score	Gap
2007-17	35/1.6	38/1.6	-3 runs
2018-22	42/2	41/1.2	+1 runs, -1 wicket
2023-26	54/1.6	43/1.6	+11 runs

In the 2007-17 era, Pakistan actually outscored India in T20I powerplays. Pakistan was a marginally better powerplay batting side. Through 2022 it was roughly even. Then since 2023 it has blown open. India now averages 11 more runs in the first six overs of a T20I against Pakistan than Pakistan does against India.

Middle overs (7-15): roughly even in run-rate, both teams score around 7 RPO across all eras. The middle isn’t where the gap is.

Death overs (16-20): India scores more (8.8 RPO vs 7.6 in 2023-26), but the difference is smaller than the powerplay gap. Both teams know how to hit in the death — Pakistan still produces death-overs hitters like Iftikhar Ahmed and Shadab Khan. What Pakistan doesn’t produce is a powerplay batting unit that lays a competitive foundation.

The shape of a 2023-26 T20I between these two: India 60-odd after 6 overs, Pakistan 40-odd. Indian bowlers defend a total Pakistan never threatens, or India chases a sub-160 total without ever pressing. The deciding work happens in the first six overs.

Pakistan’s bowling, then and now

The two phase-gap stories of the middle overs in ODIs, and the powerplay in T20Is share one thing in common. They’re the phases where a team’s bowling either keeps it in the game or loses it the game.

The Akram-Waqar era was built on wicket-taking through every phase. New-ball strikes, reverse swing through the middle, yorkers at the death. Pakistan didn’t have one specialist phase; they had bowlers who took wickets across all of them. Saqlain through the middle, Akram with the new ball and old ball, Waqar at every length. The phases blurred together.

Now look at where the gap actually lives. Pakistan concedes 5.7 RPO in ODI middle overs and takes only 2 wickets from India’s batters over those 30 overs. India concedes 4.3 RPO in the same phase and takes 6 wickets from Pakistan. It’s the middle overs, exactly the phase where reverse-swing wicket-taking used to be Pakistan’s signature that has become a one-way street.

In T20Is, India scores 54 in powerplays against Pakistan and Pakistan scores 43 against India. The 11-run powerplay gap is the new-ball gap. Pakistan’s new-ball attack historically the most feared in cricket doesn’t get wickets and doesn’t contain.

The data lines up almost embarrassingly well with the structural argument. The phases where Pakistan’s bowling used to define the rivalry are the phases where the rivalry now ends.

So is it still a rivalry?

It depends on what you mean.

If you mean television, broadcast, anticipation, ticket scarcity, geopolitical theater then yes, more than ever. The 2023 World Cup match drew 173 million Indian viewers. The 2025 Asia Cup final pulled crowds and conversation in a thoroughly one-sided 5-wicket result.

If you mean the cricket then no. The contest has moved from “two teams that play each other close” to “one team that bleeds wickets through the middle while the other accumulates, and then doesn’t have anyone left to swing at the death.” India has won 13 of the last 15 decided matches. The middle overs are where Pakistan loses these games now. The death overs are where the scorecard shows it.

The thing being sold and the thing being delivered have parted ways. The rivalry, in any sporting sense, is over and it’s been over since roughly the year the last great Pakistan bowler walked out of the dressing room. Twenty-two years of Pakistan cricket trying, and failing, to replace what they had. The rivalry, as a spectacle, has never been bigger. Both things can be true.