It’s been nearly eight years, but the Champions Trophy is finally back for its ninth edition. A tournament considered surplus to requirement, given the diminishing stature of the 50-over format, has been revived precisely for that reason, to give fillip to the longer limited-overs version that is under tremendous pressure to hold its own from the attritional five-day game and the slam-bang T20 variant that clearly is what excites the fans and, to a large extent, the players themselves, the most.

After much toing and froing and posturing, the tournament will be played in a hybrid model, much like the 50-over Asia Cup was in 2023, when too Pakistan were the official hosts. The Indian government’s decision to refuse permission for its team to travel across the border sparked hectic parleying and grandstanding. Eventually, after much persuasion and extracting a guarantee from the International Cricket Council that they too would be accorded similar privileges and would play their matches at a neutral venue when India host global events in future, the Pakistan Cricket Board agreed to a split-host scenario with India playing all their matches in Dubai and the non-India games to be staged in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore.