4 Reasons Why India Are Favourites To Beat Pakistan In Asian Games Cricket Final
India Pakistan Final: From a 14-3 head-to-head record to Pakistan’s thin Asian Games cricket history, here’s the full case for why India enter Saturday’s gold-medal final as favourites.
By North Desk Bureau
India Pakistan Final: India go into Saturday’s Asian Games gold-medal final against Pakistan as clear favourites — and the case isn’t built on rivalry bragging rights alone. It’s a combination of recent head-to-head dominance, squad strength, semifinal form, and a stark gap in each side’s own Asian Games cricket history.
1. The head-to-head record is lopsided
India have now won 14 of their last 17 men’s T20I meetings with Pakistan, including every single encounter since mid-2024 — a 61-run win at the 2024 T20 World Cup in New York, a clean 3-0 sweep through the group stage, Super Four and final of the 2025 Asia Cup, and a 61-run win at the 2026 T20 World Cup in Colombo.
That’s five consecutive wins heading into Saturday; a sixth would extend India’s current unbeaten run against Pakistan in this format to well over a year and a half without a single defeat. In ICC tournaments specifically, India’s dominance is even starker — 7 wins from 8 T20 World Cup meetings.
2. The ranking gap is real, not just reputation
India enter as the world’s No.1-ranked T20I side; Pakistan are 6th. That gap showed up in squad selection too — India have fielded a full-strength side at these Games, including Jasprit Bumrah, Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi under Shreyas Iyer, while Pakistan, led by Sahibzada Farhan, are without Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah.
3. The semifinals told two different stories
Both teams reached the final having gone through their quarterfinals without bowling a single ball — both washed out by rain, both sides advancing purely on higher ranking.
But the contrast showed up once they actually took the field on October 1: India bowled Sri Lanka out for just 45, a thoroughly dominant semifinal performance as they won by 124 runs, while Pakistan’s win over Bangladesh came by a narrower margin winning by 6 wickets and nine balls to spare. Form heading into a final matters, and India’s semifinal was the more emphatic statement of the two.
4. India Pakistan Final: Asian Games history gap favours India
India Pakistan Final: This is where the contrast is sharpest. India made their Asian Games cricket debut only in 2023 (Hangzhou) and won gold immediately, in both the men’s and women’s events — a perfect record defended across just one prior appearance.
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Pakistan’s men’s history, by comparison, is thin: a bronze medal in 2010 remains their only men’s cricket medal at the Games; they didn’t field a team in 2014; and they finished fourth, empty-handed, in 2023 after losing both their semifinal and the bronze-medal match.
Whatever happens Saturday in the India Pakistan Final, Pakistan are already guaranteed their best Asian Games men’s cricket result in 16 years just by reaching the final — but that same history suggests a team with far less big-occasion pedigree at this specific event than India carries in.
Stack the numbers together — the rivalry form, the rankings, the squad strength, Saturday’s semifinal performances, and each side’s own Asian Games track record — and every indicator points the same way.
Pakistan have the talent to cause an upset, as they’ve shown in flashes against India before. But on the full weight of evidence, India walk into Saturday’s final as clear favourites to defend their gold.
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