'The time has come to let cricket's oldest rivalry occur naturally, not by design.'
Fixtures at ICC events should no longer be engineered to ensure an India-Pakistan clash at every tournament, former England captain Michael Atherton has said, following the tensions that marred their meetings at last month's Asia Cup.
India and Pakistan faced each other three times during the competition, including in the final, but relations soured after India Captain Suryakumar Yadav declined to shake hands with his Pakistani counterpart Salman Agha in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack and India's subsequent retaliatory strikes.
The incident triggered a string of politically charged moments -- from Pakistan players' on-field gestures to India's refusal to receive the trophy from Pakistan Interior Minister and Pakistan Cricket Board President Mohsin Naqvi.
The uneasy atmosphere carried into the women's ODI World Cup game in Colombo on Sunday, where both captains again avoided a post-match handshake.
In his column for London's The Times newspaper, Atherton noted that while commercial and diplomatic considerations have driven ICC scheduling in the past, it may be time to reconsider the policy of guaranteeing India-Pakistan encounters at every global event -- a pattern seen across all 11 ICC tournaments since 2013.
'The time has come to let cricket's oldest rivalry occur naturally, not by design,' he wrote.
'Despite its scarcity (maybe, in part, because of its scarcity) it is a fixture that carries huge economic clout, one of the main reasons why the broadcast rights for ICC tournaments are worth so much -- roughly $3 billion for the most recent rights cycle (in) 2023-27,' Athers wrote.
'Due to the relative decline in the value of bilateral matches, ICC events have grown in frequency and importance, and so the India and Pakistan fixture is crucial to the balance sheets of those who would not otherwise have any skin in the game.'
But the former England skipper said that after the 'antics' at the Asia Cup, it is time to put an end to this 'tacitly supported arrangement'.
'If cricket was once the vehicle for diplomacy, it is now, clearly, a proxy for broader tensions and for propaganda. There is little justification, in any case, for a serious sport to arrange tournament fixtures to suit its economic needs and now that the rivalry is being exploited in other ways, there is even less justification for it,' Athers pointed out.
'For the next broadcast rights cycle, the fixture draw before ICC events should be transparent and if the two teams do not meet every time, so be it.'