India keep the Asian Games cricket gold, beating Pakistan by 19 runs in Nisshin

India defended the men's cricket gold at the Asian Games on Saturday in Nisshin, beating Pakistan by 19 runs. India made 211 for 6. Pakistan, chasing 212, finished on 192 for 6. The match was the final of the men's competition at the Aichi-Nagoya Games.

Abhishek Sharma set the tone. He hit 61 from 28 balls, with seven sixes, before a low bounce from Arafat Minhas ended the innings. Tilak Varma then made an unbeaten 51 from 22 balls at the back end. Shivam Dube joined him in the last four overs, and the pair hit six sixes between them. India hit 15 sixes in the innings. Minhas finished with 3 for 25. Ahmed Daniyal took 2 for 43 and dismissed Dube off the first ball of the last over. Saad Masood had already gone for 24 in the second over, including three sixes and a four.

Pakistan's chase looked lost early. The score slipped to 39 for 3. Hasan Nawaz then played the innings of the match, 96 from 51 balls, with five fours and seven sixes, a strike rate of 188. He and Saim Ayub put on 87. Nawaz was left to do most of the rest himself. He fell to the last ball, a top-edged hook off Dube, four short of a hundred. Axar Patel and Washington Sundar each took 2 for 29. Dube took 2 for 33 and bowled the last over, sealing it with a yorker. The fourth, fifth and sixth bowlers had already been expensive: Ravi Bishnoi and Abhishek Sharma were part of an eight-over stretch that cost 100 runs.

The result is India's second consecutive Asian Games men's cricket gold. The side won the title at Hangzhou in 2022, the first time the men's competition was on the programme. ESPNcricinfo put India's record in finals of major tournaments of five or more teams, across formats, at 4-3 against Pakistan after this match. Pakistan took silver. The Indian players did a lap of the ground after the win.

The final was not a meeting of equals on paper. India fielded a full-strength side. Pakistan sent a second-string squad. That gap showed in the first two-thirds of the game, then narrowed once Nawaz found the middle. A target of 212 in a 20-over game is still a steep ask when three wickets have gone before 40. Nawaz's 96 kept the last overs alive. It did not change the required rate enough for the batters at the other end.

India had reached the final on 1 October by beating Sri Lanka by 124 runs. Ishan Kishan made 80 not out in that semi-final. The same day, the men's hockey side beat Pakistan 4-3 to reach its own final, with Abhishek scoring the winner in the last minute. By the evening of 1 October a running medal tally had India eighth, on 10 gold, 22 silver and 32 bronze. Saturday's cricket gold adds one more to the gold column. The Games opened on 19 September. The closing ceremony is scheduled for 4 October.

Cricket at the Asian Games is still a short tournament compared with a World Cup or a bilateral series. The gold still carries weight inside the Games medal table, and it is the second time India has left with the men's title. The numbers from Nisshin are plain. India scored at a rate that produced 15 sixes. Pakistan lost early wickets, produced one innings of 96, and fell 19 short. Nawaz's strike rate of 188 would have been enough in most chases of this length if someone else had stayed with him past the 87-run stand. No one did.

The venue was Nisshin, in Aichi prefecture, not the main athletics stadium in Nagoya. BBC Sport filed the final from Nagoya, which is the host city name used for the Games as a whole. ESPNcricinfo's scorecard lists the ground as Nisshin and the date as 3 October 2026. The discrepancy is geographic, not about the result. Both reports agree on 211 for 6, 192 for 6, and a 19-run win.

What the gold does not settle is the wider India-Pakistan calendar. The two sides have not played a bilateral series for years. They meet when a multi-team event forces it. This final was one of those meetings, and it went the way the stronger batting card suggested it would, with a late scare attached. The next question for the Indian side is whether the same top order, Abhishek and Tilak in particular, carries this scoring rate into the matches that count for World Cup qualification and ranking points. The Asian Games gold is already in the book.