ODIs Eye Revival, CT Looks For Context

It's difficult to put a tournament in context when it was last played eight years ago. It's difficult to understand why the ICC put it off for this long. It's difficult to get excited about it. But to many in Pakistan, the memory of Mohammed Amir ripping through India's top order on a balmy English afternoon in the final at The Oval in 2017 remains a special one.

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DUBAI:

Babar Azam and Fakhar Zaman, who scored a match-winning hundred that day, are the only survivors from that winning Pakistani team who will feature in their tournament opener against New Zealand in Karachi on Wednesday.

The competition itself has undergone more name changes than the practice followed by some of the under-performing IPL franchises. The inaugural event in 1998 was unimaginatively given the sponsors' name - the Wills International Cup. It became the ICC knockout trophy in 2000, until they settled for the Champions Trophy. Funnily enough, it was also known as the Mini World Cup, but the label never stuck.

There's no definite reason why Pakistan had to wait so long to defend the title. Once the ICC white-ball calendar was restructured, the Champions Trophy was pushed behind to the last row in the pecking order. The T20 World Cup became a biennial event. The ODI World Cup was the showpiece tournament to be played every four years. But the Champions Trophy? No one really knows what it stands for, except that it is one of the world events for which the media rights are sold to keep the show on the road.