A Group Match That Is Bigger Than The Final!

COME Sunday, Old Trafford will not be a place for the faint-hearted. It will be a day where heroes are born and villains are made. It will be a day where careers are made and ended.

- Saj Sadiq

The sheer numbers which have been attached to the India Pakistan group game mean this is inevitably so.

Just about now, close to 1.5 billion people from the Sub-continent will be starting to experience anxiety about a game of cricket to be played thousands of miles away in Manchester.

The game itself is said to have been over-subscribed 30 times with more applications – 900,000plus on some estimates – than the final itself.

Some premium tickets on the secondary market are exchanging hands at more than £10,000 each.

And, perhaps the most crucial statistic is the World Cup scoreline between the countries which reads: India 6 Pakistan 0. So, one team has everything to gain, the other everything to lose at a time when bilateral relations between the countries have been in turmoil.

It is no surprise then that for the Sub-continent this is considered as the greatest sporting rivalry on the planet.

It’s no secret that players from both sides of the equation look at these games as opportunities to be elevated overnight to the stature of heroes. The flipside, of course, is that a failure to perform in such a game means players can be marked down forever as villains.