India and Pakistan had slowly rebuilt their cricketing relationship in the 2000s as India had toured Pakistan in 2004 and returned again for a full series in 2006 and by 2008 there was another tour on the calendar.
The attacks of November 2008 in which more than 160 people were killed, changed the situation completely. The Indian team’s proposed tour of Pakistan which was scheduled for January-February 2009 was suddenly no longer just a cricketing matter as the Mumbai attacks changed everything.
Before the attacks, India were expected to travel to Pakistan for a series that included Tests, ODIs and a T20 international. But the attacks in Mumbai created a major security and diplomatic crisis between the two countries. With the political relationship already strained, sending the Indian cricket team across the border became extremely difficult.
The BCCI ultimately decided that India would not tour Pakistan, with the decision tied to the Indian government’s position on the security and political situation. It was another major blow for Pakistan cricket. The series between these two sides were among the most commercially important fixtures in the sport, and the cancellation also deprived Pakistan of a high-profile home series.
India never toured Pakistan since 2008
What made the decision historically important was what followed. India have not toured Pakistan since 2008 and the two sides continued to meet in major ICC tournaments and other multi-team competitions, but regular bilateral cricket disappeared. Pakistan did come to India for a few series in 2012/13 and that was the last time these two sides met in a bilateral match.
That made the 2008 cancellation much more than a postponed series as it became the dividing line between two eras of India-Pakistan cricket. Before that incident both teams had been touring each other’s countries despite their political differences but after that every proposed bilateral series became dependent on the wider relationship between the two nations.
More than 18 years later, India and Pakistan still largely meet only in multi-team tournaments, with the ICC acknowledging that their strained political relations have kept them apart in bilateral cricket. The decision in 2008 therefore was not really about cricket alone as the sport had once again been caught in the middle of India and Pakistan’s complicated political relationship.
