Pakistan coach Mike Hesson's honest admission on not being able to beat India: 'The reality is...'

India and Pakistan have been hot rivals but lately the flavour has been fading with the contest getting lopsided in almost every field. Barring Arshad Nadeem's monstrous effort at the Paris Olympics it is very hard to recall Pakistan getting the better of India in any discipline. If we switch the focus exclusively to cricket, the contests which are now limited to Asia Cup and ICC tournaments, the last time they triumphed over the Men In Blue was in 2022.

Since then both nations have engaged in multiple ICC and continental showdowns and the fate of all the contests have been similar - India winning convincingly.

Pakistan's white-ball coach Mike Hesson, who has previously worked in India with RCB, reflected on the dominance and while doing that he made a rather straightforward point. Citing the example of the much controversial Asia Cup, which India won by beating Pakistan in the final but PCB chief Mohsin Naqvi decided to walk off with the trophy, Hesson acknowledged India's superiority on the field, admitting not just Pakistan but other teams also struggle to beat them.

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"In the Asia Cup last year, for example, we won every game except against India. The reality is every single team in the world is struggling to beat India at the moment. Every team, not just Pakistan. Rightly or wrongly, Pakistan are gauged by how they perform against India. And at the moment, India is not only the best team; they're the best team by a mile," Hesson told Cricinfo in an interview.

While Pakistan did manage to reach the finals of Asia Cup, they failed terribly at the ICC T20 World Cup 2026 co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka. While the Men In Blue went on to become the first team to win back-to-back titles, Pakistan had to be content with the Super 8 finish.

"At the T20 World Cup, we lost to England in the Super 8 off the back of a Harry Brook hundred and a very tight game outside of that. We won every [other] game except India. From 2023-2025, we didn't make it out of the pool in ICC events. So you can't go from eighth in the world to all of a sudden competing, unless you start winning more regular games of cricket. And for us to go from winning 20-odd per cent to close to three-quarters of our games in a year is significant," he explained underlining the progress.

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