Even though relations between India and Pakistan have been bad for a long time, efforts have been made at different times to bring them back on track through cricket diplomacy. Former Prime Minister of the country, Dr. Manmohan Singh had also made these efforts several times during his 10-year long tenure. Although Pakistan cheated as usual and continued supporting terrorism, Manmohan Singh still made efforts. The result of his diplomacy and strategy was that the Pakistani Prime Minister had to come to his Indian soil and see his country's crushing defeat at the hands of Team India.

Former Prime Minister of the country Manmohan Singh died on Thursday 26 December at the age of 92. Even though Dr. Singh was primarily an economist and a politician, his passion for sports was also no less. The result of this attachment was that he made the India-Pakistan match in the 2011 World Cup very special, where in the pretext of sports, he gave a special invitation to the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Yousuf Raza Gilani and then Team India did the rest.

Proudly watched Team India's victory over Pakistan

In 2011, ODI World Cup was organized in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Team India and Pakistan had made it to the semi-finals of this World Cup. The match was to be held in Mohali. Any match between India and Pakistan is special and with the World Cup, it became even more special. At such a time, PM Manmohan Singh invited Pakistani PM Geelani to watch the match together in Mohali, which he accepted.

In such a situation, this match had become more high-profile, which also became a means of reducing the distance between the two countries from the diplomatic point of view. Before the match, both the Prime Ministers met all the players and the action that started after that was seen by the whole world. Team India, captained by MS Dhoni, performed brilliantly and gave PM Manmohan Singh the opportunity to watch the entire match with his head held high with pride. Dr. Singh and Pakistan PM were sitting and watching the match and the Pakistani team was going into the darkness of defeat. Team India won that match by 29 runs and made it to the finals. The star of that victory of Team India was Sachin Tendulkar, who along with Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh gave the gift of victory to PM Singh and the entire country.

Team India gave 'birthday gift'

By the way, PM Singh had already received a gift from Team India, that too just 2 days before his birthday. This was the gift of T20 World Cup 2007. On 24 September 2007, Team India won the first T20 World Cup title by defeating Pakistan by 5 runs in the final played in Johannesburg. Just two days after this, on 26th September, it was Manmohan Singh's birthday. In this way, Team India had given a special gift to the PM and the country.

However, during the tenure of Manmohan Singh from 2004 to 2014, Team India won the T20 World Cup in 2007 and the ODI World Cup in 2011. In 2010, for the first time, Team India became number one in the Test rankings. Then in 2013, Team India won the Champions Trophy, which was Team India's last ICC title for the next 11 years. This history changed with the T20 World Cup in 2024.