'India can't compete with Pakistan' - Abdul Razzaq says Pakistan is way ahead of India in terms of talent

An India-Pakistan game is always considered the mother of all battles. It's much more than just a game for the fans. Unfortunately, the two teams do not play bilateral cricket anymore and only clash in Asia Cup and ICC events. The last decade has seen both teams follow different trajectories. While India thumped their authority in world cricket, Pakistan cricket saw a steady decline. India's bench strength is such that they can make three equally strong teams and each team will be good enough to beat the best. However, former Pakistan all-rounder Abdul Razzaq feels that India does not have the same level of talent as Pakistan, which is why they don't play Pakistan in bilateral series.

“I don’t think India can compete with Pakistan. The kind of talent Pakistan has is entirely different, and I don’t think is a good thing for cricket that India and Pakistan are not having matches. It used to be an exciting prospect and gave players the opportunity to show how much pressure they could handle. So that has gone missing. I feel that had it continued, people would have found out that the kind of talent Pakistan has, India does not,” said Razzaq on a cricket show on ARY News.

The all-rounder though clarified his point and said his statement doesn't mean that India does not have a good team. He further drew comparisons between legends of both countries and tried to explain that Pakistan have always produced better players.

“India too has a good team, I’m not saying anything otherwise. Even they have good players. But if you look at it potential-wise, we had Imran Khan, they had Kapil Dev. If you are to compare, then Imran Khan was a lot better. Then we had Wasim Akram, they did not have a player of that caliber.

We had Javed Miandad, and they had Gavaskar. There is no comparison. Then we had Inzamam, Yousuf, Younis, Shahid Afridi… they had Dravid, Sehwag. If you look at it overall, Pakistan has always produced good players. All these are big reasons. This is why India doesn’t want to play against us,” Abdul Razzaq added.