Pakistan and India’s Underneath-19 sides are competing in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, on Sunday in a high-stakes Tremendous Six conflict, with the customary handshake not happening on the toss.
The fixture comes with further edge after Pakistan U19 hammered India by 191 runs of their most up-to-date assembly on the U19 Asia Cup remaining in December, and the identical rigidity round pre-match formalities has already been seen on the age-group degree, with captains skipping the customary greeting on the toss in that match.
The freeze over match-day courtesies has escalated since a lethal army conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours in Could 2025, with friction repeatedly surfacing round toss ceremonies and post-match formalities.
It first drew main consideration on the males’s degree through the ACC Males’s T20 Asia Cup in September, when India’s gamers refused to shake palms with Pakistan for his or her first group stage match on the toss in an episode that drew widespread criticism.
The difficulty intensified additional through the match when India captain Suryakumar Yadav once more refused the customary toss handshake with Pakistan captain Salman Ali Agha in two extra fixtures.
The incident additionally triggered controversy over how the toss ceremony was dealt with, with the omission reportedly linked to match referee Andy Pycroft, and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) contemplating pulling out earlier than Pycroft admitted mishandling elements of the episode and expressed remorse, in line with the PCB.
The strain later prolonged to different occasions, together with the ladies’s sport, the place the perimeters declined greetings on the toss through the latest T20 World Cup, and to the lads’s Rising Stars Asia Cup tie in Doha.
The stance has additionally been bolstered by officers. Board of Management for Cricket in India (BCCI) Secretary Devajit Saikia mentioned the strategy concerning Pakistan would stay unchanged, and instructed the BBC there was no assurance Indian gamers would shake palms with Pakistani counterparts throughout their Ladies’s World Cup assembly in Colombo on October 5.
In that match, Pakistan captain Fatima Sana and India captain Harmanpreet Kaur averted shaking palms on the toss, persevering with the identical sample.
The no-handshake flashpoint has not been restricted to India–Pakistan fixtures. At this Underneath-19 World Cup, India captain Ayush Mhatre and Bangladesh’s stand-in captain Zawad Abrar skipped the customary handshake after the toss in India’s Group B match, a second framed within the context of heightened board-level tensions.
In distinction, blind ladies from India and Pakistan brushed apart the political rigidity on the inaugural Blind Ladies’s T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka in November.
Whereas there was no handshake after the toss, each side later greeted one another warmly on the finish of the match, exchanging compliments after travelling collectively to the venue on the identical bus.
