India Beat Pakistan Pti (2)Image Credit source: PTI
Defending champion Team India has made it to the Super-8 round of T20 World Cup 2026. In its third match of the tournament, Team India defeated Pakistan by a huge margin of 61 runs in Colombo. With the help of Ishan Kishan’s brilliant innings and second consecutive half-century, Team India batted first and scored a strong score of 175 runs. This proved impossible for Pakistan and it collapsed for just 114 runs. With this, Team India increased its record against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup to 8-1.
This match, played on Sunday 15 February at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, was on the verge of cancellation till a few days ago. In protest against Bangladesh’s exit from the T20 World Cup, Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif had announced that the Pakistani team will not play the match against India on February 15. After doing this drama for a few days, when the ICC warned them of the punishment they would receive, the PCB had to take a U-turn from its decision and agree to play the match. But this decision also proved costly for the Pakistani team.
Ishaan attacked alone
In this match, the Pakistani team, which won the toss, had dismissed an explosive batsman like Abhishek Sharma for 0 in the very first over. Despite this, she could not control this match and Ishan Kishan became the reason for this. Team India’s opener Ishaan, who was in explosive form, proved to be the real difference in this match. On the dual-purpose pitch of Premadasa Stadium, Ishaan had largely eliminated Pakistan from the match by playing a blazing innings of 77 runs in just 40 balls.
Apart from Ishan, other batsmen were struggling to play fast, which was also visible in the performance of captain Suryakumar Yadav (32) and Tilak Verma (25). But in the last overs, Shivam Dubey (27) and Rinku Singh (11) quickly scored some runs and took the team to a strong score, which already seemed enough for victory. Sam Ayub took maximum 3 wickets for Pakistan.
Hardik-Bumrah wrote the story of defeat
Pakistan’s first over also went exactly the same as Team India’s. In the first over itself, Hardik Pandya sent back Sahibzada Farhan without opening the account. But the story after this was completely different. While Ishan Kishan counter-attacked Pakistan, the bowlers of Team India defeated him right there. The story of the match was almost decided in the second over, when Jasprit Bumrah sent Sam Ayub (6) and Pakistani captain Salman Aga (4) back to the pavilion within 6 balls.
After this the spinners took charge and one by one sent the Pakistani batsmen back to the pavilion. While Akshar Patel removed Babar Azam for 5 runs, Tilak Verma took the wicket of Shadab Khan. Usman Khan (44) was certainly leading the charge alone for Pakistan but Akshar also put brakes on his fighting innings. Ultimately, in exactly 18 overs, the Pakistani team collapsed for just 114 runs. Hardik, Bumrah, Akshar and Varun Chakraborty took 2-2 wickets for Team India. Whereas Tilak and Kuldeep Yadav got 1 success each.
