By: Sports DeskUpdated: September 27, 2025 03:25 PM IST 3 min readImran Khan on the left and Sunil Gavaskar on the right. (Express archive/File photo)Rafael Nadal-Roger Federer (Tennis), Lionel Messi-Cristiano Ronaldo (Football), Michael Schumacher-Mika Häkkinen (Formula 1 racing), and Michael Phelps-Ryan Lochte (Swimming). These are some of the renowned rivalries between top athletes in some of the popular sports. While there has always been a fierce edge to better the other, as a result of the competition, they pushed each other to get better. In cricket, too, there have been many match-ups where the bowlers and batters have played mind games on the field to gain the upper hand. James Anderson vs Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli was one such intriguing battle, which added an extra layer of sauce to an already delicious India vs England meal.Although India doesn’t play arch-rivals Pakistan too often these days, whatever little they meet during the multilateral tournaments, these match-up narratives in these games add a bit more spicier sauce compared to other ones. Shaheen Shah Afridi against Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli is a popular one in this modern iteration of the age-old rivalry, and in the ongoing Asia Cup, it is Afridi vs Abhishek Sharma, where the left-hander in two rounds so far has had the better of the individual match-up clash. Former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar recalls an anecdote from the days when India played Pakistan in red-ball cricket, where he was asked by a former Pakistan cricketer to play for one more year because Imran Khan wanted to beat the Indian Test side for the first time on Indian soil with Gavaskar in it.“‘You can’t retire now. Pakistan is coming to India next year, and I want to beat India in India. If you aren’t part of that team, it won’t be the same. Come on, let’s have one last tilt against each other,’ Imran Khan replied when I told him I planned to retire at the end of the India tour of England,” Gavaskar revealed his conversation with Imran Khan during lunch at Lord’s in 1986 in his column he wrote for the Times of India.The 76-year-old further recalled telling Khan that if the tour was not announced before the final Test against England, he would make the announcement. “I said if the announcement of the tour wasn’t made before the final Test, I would go ahead and announce my retirement from international cricket. The tour was indeed announced in a few days,” Gavaskar wrote. “Pakistan won the last and final Test of that series after the earlier Tests were all drawn and thus beat India for the first time in India,” Gavaskar added.Imran Khan was named the Player of the series for his all-round performance as he picked up eight wickets from five games and also managed to score 324 runs at an average of 64.80. Gavaskar, on the other hand, played only four games, scored 295 runs at an average of 49.17, and in the individual battle count, Imran Khan managed to pick Gavaskar twice, once in the 2nd Test at Jaipur for a duck and then in the 4th Test for 63 in Ahmedabad.Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd