Pakistan India is not about rankings alone. The rankings at times go out of the window and I do believe even if India is no 1 and Pakistan is no 9 and India plays a 5 test, 5 ODI and 5 T20 series with Pakistan right now, there is no doubt that India will not be favorites and will not win the series but the pressure, expectations of an indo Pakistan series will force the Pakistani players to try and punch above their weight.
Maybe as the series goes on, the initial nerves of the Pakistani players will go away and the team will get used to the opposition. Pakistan Imo especially when it comes to indo Pakistan contests has suffered the most because of the lack of cricketing activity bw the two countries which is why they struggle to handle the pressure of indo pak contests these days and they end up playing even way below their limited potential
Lol at posters highlighting Pakistan's defeats against the low ranked sides of Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, West Indies etc. It doesn't really matter in an indo Pakistan contest. Pakistan prior to the 1999 tour of India was coming off a 1-0 defeat to Zimbabwe and a 1-0 defeat to Australia at home whereas India had demolished a very decent, very game Australian side at home.
Pakistan went to India and won the series 2-1.
The gap between the two sides was insignificant in 1999, so there is no need of writing tales about what Pakistan did.
Historical context means nothing. It is all about the relative quality of the two sides, and the gap between Pakistan and India has never been this wide.
While the momentum shifted towards India by early 2000s, Pakistan was competitive with India until the early 2010s.
The gap widened to an astronomical level after the 2012-2013 series as India successfully transitioned from the Tendulkar, Sehwag, Dravid, Laxman, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Zaheer, Harbhajan generation to Kohli, Rohit, Pujara, Rahane, Dhawan, Ashwin, Jadeja, Bumrah, Shami etc. they more or less retained their quality.
On the other hand, Pakistan badly regressed. They went from Yousuf, Inzamam, Younis, Asif, Akhtar, Afridi, Razzaq, Gul, Ajmal to Azhar, Shafiq, Haris, Abbas, Naseem, Shadab, Faheem, Sohail, Imad. The drop in quality is huge.
Only Babar, Yasir, Shaheen and Rizwan are comparable to the players of the 2000s generation.
Today in 2020-2021, the gap is at an all-time high. If there is a series today, Pakistan will get obliterated regardless of the format.
Speaking of nerves, the current Pakistan team has had decent exposure to the current Indian team. The same set of players played 5 ODIs in the space of two years and India won 4 out of 5 matches, and in 2 of those matches they were without Kohli.
None of India’s 4 wins were close affairs, which illustrates the gulf between the teams. The Champions Trophy final was also very one-sided in Pakistan’s favor, but these type of results often happen in one-off games where the better side has a complete off-day.
If Pakistan and India play a series, Pakistan might crash India in a one-off game, but over the course of the series, India will win with ease and most of their wins will be very one-sided.
The idea that Pakistani players will raise their game against India in a bilateral series is just a sad coping mechanism based on the history between the two sides while conveniently ignoring the fact that the gap between the two teams was never this massive.
