India | Pakistan

Another Pakistan-India match, the gulf of quality between the two sides glaring yet again, and brighter than ever. Fair to say Pakistan are a young side undergoing transition under a new captain and a newer team management, but there were enough instances throughout the fixture that highlighted a bigger problem: big-match nerves. One of those few instances was Shaheen Shah Afridi’s late onslaught of 33 off 16, which included four clean hits for sixes. He and Sufiyan Muqeem added 43 off 22 balls — a strike-rate of 195-plus — to drag Pakistan to 127-9 when it looked like the team wouldn’t even get into three figures. If tailenders can do that, why not the specialist batters? India’s Suryakumar Yadav plays a shot during the Asia Cup 2025 T20 International cricket match against Pakistan at the Dubai International Stadium in Dubai, the UAE. — Reuters To put it simply, the pressure of the big occasion got the better of them before India, obviously a well-oiled T20 machine, faced no challenge whatsoever during the c...

A Pakistan-India cricket match is always a blockbuster, but emotions will run even higher in Sunday’s Asia Cup clash between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who engaged in a four-day military conflict earlier this year. Even before the clashes in May, which nearly escalated into a full-blown war, bilateral cricket ties were suspended. The arch-rivals now play each other only in multi-team tournaments. Political relations have deteriorated further since the clashes, with several former Indian players urging the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to boycott what will be the first meeting between the teams since the recent hostilities. While the threat of a boycott is over, sparks may fly with Pakistan captain Salman Ali Agha and his Indian counterpart Suryakumar Yadav ruling out dialling down aggression in the much-anticipated Group A fixture. While reigning T20 world champions India are the firm favourites to retain their title, Pakistan are on a high, having convincingly beaten Afghanistan to win the ...

Pace bowling great Wasim Akram has urged Pakistan and India’s cricketers to ignore the noise and enjoy the game when they meet in a highly charged Asia Cup T20 match on Sunday. The Group A match in Dubai is the first clash on the cricket field between the countries since a military conflict four months ago took relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours to their lowest point in decades. India resisted calls to boycott the match between the pair, who have not played in any bilateral series since deadly attacks in Mumbai 2008. “Enjoy, it’s a game of cricket,” legendary left-armer Akram told AFP of the match, which potentially could be the first of three high-octane meetings between the countries in the T20 tournament. “Forget about everything other than cricket. One team will win, and one team will lose,” he said. “Just enjoy the moment if you win the game. Pressure will come, enjoy that and show discipline because this is just a game. It’s for both teams and for both sets of fans.” A full house of 25,000 i...

Republican President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the United States ambassador to India said on Thursday that Washington and New Delhi were “not that far apart” on tariffs. “We’re not that far apart on a deal on these tariffs,” Sergio Gor, a close Trump aide who is currently director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, said at his Senate confirmation hearing. “I do think it will get resolved in the next few weeks,” Gor said. US-India ties have been strained by Trump’s trade war, with talks on lower tariff rates collapsing after India, the world’s fifth-largest economy, resisted opening its vast agricultural and dairy sectors. Bilateral trade between the two countries is worth more than $190 billion each year. Trump first imposed additional tariffs of 25 per cent on imports from India, then said they would double to 50pc from August 27 as punishment for New Delhi’s increased purchases of Russian oil, as Washington works to end the war in Ukraine. Trump said on Tuesday his administration is contin...

India’s Neeraj Chopra and Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan will battle for javelin gold in Tokyo next week, the latest chapter in a brotherly rivalry which has soured since a deadly military conflict between their countries. The Tokyo Olympic champion, Chopra, and his successor in Paris, Nadeem, will line up at the athletics world championships for their first encounter since the nuclear-armed neighbours engaged in a four-day conflict in May, their worst since 1999. Chopra, who took Olympic silver behind his great rival a year ago, had often spoken about his friendly relations with Nadeem despite the tensions between their countries. After Nadeem won gold and Chopra stood alongside him on the podium in Paris, Nadeem’s mother Raziah Parveen said: “Winning and losing is part of sport, but they are like brothers.” Chopra’s mother Saroj said she took some solace in Nadeem beating her son because the Pakistani “is also our boy”. But publicly at least that changed after the conflict. The 27-year-old Chopra, who will defen...

Kuldeep Yadav returned figures of 4-7 to lead holders India to a crushing nine-wicket win over hosts United Arab Emirates in their opening match of the men’s Asia Cup 2025 on Wednesday. Kuldeep struck three times in one over with his left-arm wrist spin as tournament favourites India skittled UAE for a paltry 57 in 13.1 overs after they elected to field first in the T20 in Dubai. India romped home to victory in 4.3 overs after left-handed opener Abhishek Sharma hit 30 off 16 balls and vice-captain Shubman Gill stood unbeaten on 20. But it was the bowlers who set up victory for the reigning T20 World Cup champions as medium-pacer Shivam Dube claimed three before Kuldeep wrapped up the innings. Put in to bat, UAE opener Alishan Sharafu started briskly with boundaries before falling to pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah for 22 off 17 balls. Skipper Muhammad Waseem struck 19 to be the only other batsman to make double figures in an otherwise shambolic show by the rest of the team. Kuldeep’s three wickets, including Wasee...

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday his administration is continuing negotiations to address trade barriers with India and that he would talk to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a sign a deal may be imminent after weeks of diplomatic friction. Trump, in a marked shift of tone, said he looked forward to speaking to Modi in the “upcoming weeks” and expressed optimism that they could finalise a trade deal. “I feel certain that there will be no difficulty in coming to a successful conclusion for both of our Great Countries,” he said in a post on social media. Modi reciprocated the optimism in a social media post on Wednesday, saying Washington and New Delhi “are close friends and natural partners”. He said teams from both countries are working to conclude the trade discussions at the earliest. “I am also looking forward to speaking with President Trump. We will work together to secure a brighter, more prosperous future for both our people,” Modi said. The latest comments from both the leaders drove India’s ...

ISLAMABAD - Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar on Monday reaffirmed Pakistan’s unwavering commitment to peace, diplomacy, and regional stability while strongly criticizing India’s internal and external policies, particularly its treatment of minorities and alleged involvement in transnational.

India on Monday released additional water into the Sutlej River, raising fears of another wave of flooding downstream.

DUBAI: Could the Indian government’s own sports policy hold the key to reviving the most watched, most lucrative and most emotionally charged rivalry in Test cricket — Pakistan versus India? Upon reviewing India’s Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports’ policy on international events, a key clause stands out: “Indian teams and individual players will take part in international events that also have teams or players from Pakistan. Similarly, Pakistani players and teams will be able to participate in such multilateral events hosted by India.” Another important line states: “About international and multilateral events, in India or abroad, we are guided by the practices of international sports bodies and the interest of our own sportspersons.” Taken together, the policy is clear: bilateral series remain off-limits, but participation in international and multilateral events is allowed, and India defers to the practices of international sports bodies — in this case, the International Cricket Council (ICC). This is wh...

United States President Donald Trump on Friday said India and Russia seem to have been “lost” to China after their leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, highlighting his split from New Delhi and Moscow as Beijing pushes a new world order. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three other world leaders together at Xi’s summit in China. Asked about Trump’s post, the Indian foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters in New Delhi that he had no comment. Representatives for Beijing and Moscow could not be immediately reached for comment on Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform. Xi hosted more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Putin and Modi were seen holding hands at the su...

The Foreign Office (FO) has said that India failed to provide Pakistan with complete details regarding the recent floods through established diplomatic procedures.

Authorities in India banned the X account of an Austrian economist after he shared a map showing Khalistan having been carved out of India and called for “dismantling India”, the local media reported on Friday. The Khalistan movement is a Sikh separatist movement seeking an independent state for the religious minority carved out of Indian territory. It is considered a security threat by the Indian government. The economist, Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn, appeared to be calling for the creation of Khalistan in his post on X, stating: “I call to dismanlte India into ExIndia. Narendra Modi is Russia’s man. We need friend of freedom for @KhalistanNet.” The map also seemed to be implying the separation of various other regions of India. According to NDTV, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology “flagged the viral post and directed X to withhold access to the account for Indian users. The account has since been disabled in India”. The report added that the post resulted in “...

Neeraj Chopra does not usually worry about distance as long as he gets on the podium but the poster boy of Indian athletics knows he may have to throw beyond the 90 metres mark if he is to defend his javelin world title in Tokyo this month. A mop-haired Chopra became India’s first track-and-field athlete to win Olympic gold in the Japanese capital four years ago, and has since added a Diamond League trophy, world championships gold and a silver medal at the 2024 Paris Games. In November last year, the 27-year-old brought in three-time Olympic champion Jan Zelezny as his coach in a bid to throw even farther. Six months into the partnership, Chopra registered a personal best of 90.23m in Doha earlier this year. But the Indian has fallen well short of 90m in his last five outings and threw a modest 85.01m in the Diamond League Final in Zurich last week, finishing a distant second behind German Julian Weber’s monster throw of 91.51m. While a string of high 80m throws have kept him in the top two in each of his la...

Flooding across northern India killed at least five people on Wednesday, officials said, with more thunderstorms expected and local media reporting that 10,000 people have been evacuated from the river banks in capital Delhi. The monsoon season in India has been particularly intense this year, killing at least 130 people in August alone in north India, wiping out villages and destroying infrastructure. The latest round of flooding has hit northern areas of occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab, where the Chenab and Tawi rivers have risen above the danger mark at several spots. The swollen rivers have triggered landslides and damaged many roads, disconnecting parts of the mountainous regions of Jammu and Himachal from the rest of India. At least five people were killed today after landslides battered Rajouri and Mandi districts in Jammu and Himachal Pradesh, respectively, officials said. The India Meteorological Department warned of heavy to very heavy rain in the region today, w...

The River Chenab entered a high flood situation on Wednesday at Marala Headworks after India released large volumes of water into the Chenab and Sutlej rivers from upstream.

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), brokered by the World Bank in 1960, has been a cornerstone of transboundary water cooperation between India and Pakistan for over six decades.

United States President Donald Trump said on Monday that India has offered to reduce its tariffs on US goods to zero amid deteriorating ties between the two countries. While calling the US’s relationship with India “one-sided”, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “They have now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago.” The Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to Trump’s comments, which follow the implementation of total duties as high as 50 per cent on Indian goods. Relations between the two countries have plummeted, with 50pc levies on many Indian imports into the US taking effect last week as punishment for New Delhi’s massive purchases of Russian oil, a part of US efforts to pressure Moscow into ending its war in Ukraine. Since his return to the White House this year, Trump has wielded tariffs as a wide-ranging policy tool, with the levies upending global trade. Amid this dispute, India has grown closer to Beijing and Moscow. Indian Pr...

Punjab Minister for Information and Culture Azma Bokhari said on Monday that India has issued another flood warning to Pakistan after releasing more water into the Sutlej River, intensifying the crisis across Punjab.

PDMA warns of fresh wave of 800,000 cusecs entering Chenab from India; 'Super flood' breaches riverbanks