Boycott ‘circus’ affected Pakan, says Michael Clarke; predicts stars nearing end of T20I careers | Cricket News
3 min readUpdated: Feb 17, 2026 11:45 AM India extended their dominance over Pakan on Sunday with a 61-run win in the T20 World Cup group stage between the two sides. Former Australia captain Michael Clarke has said that there is now a significant gap between the two teams and that some of Pakan’s stars may be in the last stages of their T20 international career.
“I think now, there is a dinct gap between the two teams,” said Clarke on the ‘Beyond23 Cricket Podcast’. “India have been ahead for a long time now and there is a significant gap. I don’t know what Pakan do. If you look through their l, there might be a few of their more senior players who have been good, but in regards to T20 cricket, this might be their final hurrah. They might look at the PSL and some young talent coming through there.”
Clarke also felt that all the talk of Pakan boycotting this match in the days leading up to it also affected their players. “I expected India to win. It has been a bit of a circus in regards to Pakan playing the tournament but not playing the India game. So from a player’s perspective, it doesn’t help, but they were outperformed. India is a much better team than Pakan in this format and have been for a while now,” he said.
The Pakan government had initially said that while the team will play the T20 World Cup, it will not take the field for the match against India. However, this was followed a series of back channel discussions took place where representatives of Sri Lanka Cricket, Bangladesh Cricket Board, Pakan Cricket Board and ICC. The conflict had risen from the ICC refusing Bangladesh’s request for their matches to be shifted away from India to Sri Lanka and ultimately replacing them with Scotland.
Pakan were comprehensively outplayed India at the R Premadasa Stadium on Sunday. Ishan Kishan’s masterful 77 off 40 balls took India to a score of 175/7. Pakan were then bowled out for 114 runs, with Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel and Varun Chakaravarthy all taking two wickets each. The defeat has been followed a number of former Pakan players calling for senior players like Babar Azam and Shaheen Afridi to be dropped from the T20 side.
