In the cruellest of ironies, Pakistan is hosting their first major cricket event in almost three decades but a compromise of the Champions Trophy has meant Sunday’s final featuring nemesis India will instead be held in Dubai.

The sterile surroundings of the UAE – once Pakistan’s home base when they were nomads for much of the 2010s due to security issues – will see hot favorite India contest the decider against South Africa or New Zealand.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow for the passionate Pakistan cricket fans – with their mercurial team knocked out early – who don’t get to watch in person the biggest cricket match of the year.

How did we get to this bizarre situation? Cricket might be a British Commonwealth sport, evoking staid images of players in all whites with bat and ball in hand in green pastures, but it is entirely ruled by India with an iron fist.

India, the world’s most populous country, is the heartbeat for cricket and also its financial centre. About 80% of the sport’s finances is derived from India, whose cricket governing body receives about 40% of the revenue despite collecting billions of dollars through domestic broadcast deals.

So India have all the leverage when it comes to politicking with Pakistan in a never-ending feud which seeps into cricket. The neighbors have fought three wars since independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and tensions have increasingly been fraught in recent times.

India’s sports teams are not allowed to travel to Pakistan due to security concerns under strict edict from the right-winged Modi government. The countries do not play bilateral cricket against each other with matches between them consigned to International Cricket Council events, where the money-spinning contest between India and Pakistan is milked and draws of tournaments bent.

However, Pakistan did travel to India for the 2023 World Cup and the match-up between them had a whiff of nationalism in the terraces.

When it was announced in 2021 that Pakistan would host the Champions Trophy, there were eyebrows raised and senior administrators even privately expressed to me doubts over whether the tournament would ever take place in Pakistan.

It did, sort of. After much quarrelling, with India threatening a boycott which would essentially sink the tournament, there was a compromise reached just two months out of the event. It meant that all of India’s matches had to be played in Dubai, for some time cricket’s defacto location with its main ground within metres of the ICC’s headquarters.

With India progressing to the final, three of the four biggest matches of the tournament will be played outside of Pakistan. It’s led to shambolic logistical issues with both South Africa and Australia having to fly to Dubai before the semi-finals, waiting to see whether they would have to undertake the three-hour flight back to Pakistan depending on results.

Australia were fortunate to have stayed, but came up against an India team that was expert on the slower, lower wicket of Dubai compared to the batting-friendly conditions in Pakistan. India emerged victorious, leading to calls of favouritism considering they are the only team to have been nestled comfortably in the one location throughout.

India might well be the best 50-over team in the world, and they should lift the trophy by the end of Sunday, but it won’t quell the prevailing belief that the sport of cricket merely exists to serve the whims of its financial juggernaut.