Hard to believe amidst all the heat and dust stirred up by the ongoing Asia Cup cricket championship in Dubai, but less than three years after Independence and Partition, India and Pakistan fielded a joint cricket team in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in March 1950.
In fact, it was a combined India, Pakistan, and Ceylon team that played against the visiting Commonwealth XI, led by the Australian Leonard Livingstone. This Commonwealth XI was on the first of its three tours of the subcontinent between the 1949-50 and 1953-54 seasons.
During the extensive tour of India, the Commonwealth XI played five matches against the Indian national side. These matches were designated as unofficial Tests, alongside several other games. Midway, the team broke off the tour to make a short trip to both Pakistan and Ceylon, where it played four matches in Kandy and Colombo.
The last of these matches, held at the Colombo Oval from March 4 to 6, 1950, featured the joint team and ended in a draw. The Commonwealth XI was composed of players from England, Australia, and the West Indies. Many of these players were engaged in league matches during the English summer. Among them was West Indian legend and future captain Frank Worrell, who would take part in the next two tours as well.
The joint Asian team, known as the Ceylon, India and Pakistan Combined XI, was captained by Ceylon’s SS Jayawickreme. The squad included two Pakistanis, two Indians, and seven players from the host country. The Indian contingent featured the legendary all-rounder and future captain Vinoo Mankad, alongside another skilled all-rounder, Dattu Phadkar. Between them, they took all 10 wickets in the Commonwealth XI’s first innings, with pace bowler Phadkar claiming an impressive 6 for 39.
The success of this match led to it being staged again the following season (1950-51), when the Commonwealth XI toured India once more for five unofficial Tests and also visited Ceylon. This time, the Combined XI was more evenly distributed among the three nations.
Once again, Colombo Oval hosted the game in February 1951. The visitors clinched a four-day match victory by 120 runs. The Combined XI was led by Vijay Hazare, who would later captain India during tours of England in 1952 and the West Indies in 1953. Other Indian players included pace bowler Shute Banerjee, all-rounder Gul Mohammad (who would later migrate and represent Pakistan), and middle-order batsman CD Gopinath. The rest of the team comprised two Pakistanis and several players from Ceylon.
This match was notably marked by two centuries—the Australian Bruce Dooland for the Commonwealth XI and Vijay Hazare for the Combined XI. England wicketkeeper Les Ames captained the Commonwealth team.
CD Gopinath, who now lives in Chennai, played eight Test matches and is the only surviving Indian player from that 1951 match. At 95, he holds the distinction of being India’s oldest Test cricketer.
Frank Worrell, already established as a premier batsman at the time, would go on in 1960 to become the first Black West Indian appointed as captain. Before then, all captains of West Indies teams from 1928 onwards had been white Europeans domiciled in the Caribbean. Sadly, Worrell died tragically young of cancer in March 1967 at the age of just 42.
It would be another 45 years before a combined India-Pakistan team played together again—and once more, it was in Colombo. This occurred during the 1996 Wills World Cup, which was jointly hosted by India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Following a terrorist bomb attack in the heart of Colombo on the eve of the World Cup, which killed 80 people, Australia and the West Indies forfeited their matches in the Sri Lankan capital due to security concerns. In response, the organisers fielded a joint India-Pakistan team led by Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin. The team included stalwarts such as Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble (who was the Man of the Match), and Wasim Akram, and played against Sri Lanka in a remarkable display of sub-continental unity.
However, that lofty concept of unity will likely be far from the minds of Indian and Pakistani players when they line up for the high-voltage Super Fours match in Dubai on Sunday.
*Gulu Ezekiel is the author of 18 sports books, the latest being* *What If…? Indian Cricket’s Counter-Factual History.*
https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/when-sl-india-and-pakistan-teamed-up-against-the-rest