Men’s team: India 3-0 Pakistan

• Harmeet Desai got things going, beating Khan Muhammad 11-4, 11-3, 11-5 in straight games
• Sathiyan Gnanasekaran extended the lead, defeating Abbas Khan 11-1, 11-8, 11-9
• Payas Jain sealed the clean sweep, beating Khan Muhammad 11-2, 11-5, 11-7

India didn’t drop a single game across the tie. This was a much-needed bounce-back after a shock defeat to Iran earlier in the tournament (India had opened their campaign with a win over Indonesia). The win moved India to the top of Group F with five points from three matches, ahead of Iran — though Iran still had a match against Indonesia left to play.

Women’s team: India 3-0 Pakistan

• Sutirtha Mukherjee opened with a 3-0 win over Aleena Khan (11-3, 11-3, 11-4)
• Syndrela Das, playing her first match on the big stage, beat Kalsoom Khan 11-6, 11-7, 11-5
• Sreeja Akula closed it out, defeating Fatima Khan 11-4, 11-5, 11-5

This was the women’s third win in three matches — their quickest and most dominant result of the tournament so far — and it came right after a hard-fought 3-2 win over Singapore the day before. The victory booked India’s spot in the women’s team quarterfinals (advancing straight to the Round of 16/quarterfinal stage), with their next match scheduled for September 22.

The bigger picture: India’s table tennis campaign is drawing on a growing legacy at the Asian Games — the men’s team won India’s first-ever table tennis medal at Jakarta 2018, and Sutirtha Mukherjee (part of today’s winning women’s side) already has an Asian Games bronze from Hangzhou 2023 in women’s doubles. Seven golds are up for grabs in table tennis at these Games, with the team events wrapping up before individuals take over and finals set for September 28.

The full schedule (Sept 27 – Oct 17):

• ODIs: 1st – Sept 27, Thiruvananthapuram (Greenfield International Stadium); 2nd – Sept 30, Guwahati (Barsapara Cricket Stadium); 3rd – Oct 3, New Chandigarh
• T20Is: 1st – Oct 6, Lucknow; 2nd – Oct 9, Ranchi; 3rd – date TBD, Indore; 4th – Oct 14, Hyderabad; 5th – Oct 17, Bengaluru (marking M. Chinnaswamy Stadium’s return to hosting internationals since October 2024)

Captaincy split: Shubman Gill leads the ODI side while Shreyas Iyer captains the T20I team — a dual-captaincy setup, with Shai Hope leading the West Indies.

India’s ODI squad: Shubman Gill (C), Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ruturaj Gaikwad, KL Rahul (VC, WK), Dhruv Jurel (WK), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Prasidh Krishna, Gurnoor Brar, Mohammed Siraj, Auqib Nabi, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Naman Dhir.

India’s T20I squad: Shreyas Iyer (C), Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan (WK), Sanju Samson (WK), Tilak Varma (VC), Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Arshdeep Singh, Prince Yadav, and Mayank Yadav.

Why this series matters: This marks India’s return to 50-over cricket after a rough tour of England, where the team suffered a 3-0 ODI series defeat, on top of losing the T20I series against both Ireland and England. That dip in form came right after a high point earlier in the year — India had won the 2026 T20 World Cup, swept Afghanistan 3-0 in ODIs, and won a one-off Test against them. Ahead of squad selection, Rishabh Pant’s potential ODI comeback and Hardik Pandya’s fitness were reportedly major talking points for selectors, and the T20I squad was expected to largely mirror the Asian Games squad, while the ODI side had more loose ends given several key players’ absence for the Asian Games.

What’s next: After the West Indies series, India continue building toward the 2027 World Cup with a five-match ODI series in New Zealand starting November 4, and a home white-ball season that also includes Sri Lanka (Dec 13–27) and Zimbabwe (January), before a marquee five-Test home series against Australia from January 21 to March 7.

The Plan (announced Tuesday, July 28)

FIFA President Gianni Infantino unveiled a proposal to spin off FIFA’s commercial operations — including the men’s and women’s World Cups and Club World Cup — into a new subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE). The plan would sell up to a 20% minority stake to outside investors, targeting an initial equity valuation of $20 billion and raising up to $4.2 billion. J.P. Morgan was hired to manage the deal.

The lead investor was set to be Thrive Eternal, a fund from Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital — Joshua being the brother of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Infantino framed it as “democratization of football,” promising FIFA’s 211 member associations dramatically higher payouts (up to $86 million each by 2038, versus roughly $36 million under the current structure).

Why It Blew Up Fast

Opposition was immediate and intense:

• UEFA (Europe’s 55 members, including World Cup holders Spain, plus Germany, France, England) voted to boycott all FIFA competitions — men’s and women’s World Cup included — for as long as the proposal remained alive, calling it “irresponsible and indefensible” and saying football’s future “cannot be dictated” by profit-seeking investors.
• CONCACAF (41 members, including 2026 co-hosts USA, Canada, Mexico) and the AFC (Asia) also formally rejected the plan.
• Two senior FIFA officials broke ranks internally — one resigned as a presidential adviser, another said staff had been “deceived” about the project.
• UK PM-level criticism: British PM Andy Burnham said Infantino was “the wrong man to lead” FIFA.
• US House Judiciary Democrats accused Infantino of running a “kickback hat trick,” tying it to his earlier FIFA Peace Prize award to Trump and a FIFA office lease inside Trump Tower.

The Political Subtext

This landed on top of an already-scrutinized Infantino-Trump relationship: the FIFA Peace Prize given to Trump, Trump’s on-record intervention to get a red card suspension overturned for US player Folarin Balogun during the tournament, and the “FIFA Pass” program to help foreign World Cup visitors navigate immigration enforcement. Critics saw the Kushner-backed investment deal as the latest and most direct example of FIFA aligning its business interests with Trump’s inner circle.

The Outcome — FIFA Backed Down

Just three days later (Friday, July 31), Infantino scrapped the plan entirely: he said the “proposal will not proceed,” explaining that the project had created divisions that were “no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.” It’s described as a stunning, rapid defeat — FIFA had used the same “boycott threat” leverage once before, in 2021, to kill a plan for a biennial World Cup.

Why It Matters Beyond Sports

This is a good segment to frame as a governance and money-in-sports story: it’s one of the clearest recent examples of member nations successfully checking a powerful global sports body’s leadership, and it ties into the broader “Trump-adjacent dealmaking” storyline that’s been recurring across sports, media, and business this year. It also raises fresh questions about how FIFA — sitting on record 2026 World Cup revenue near $12-15 billion — will fund its stated ambitions without private capital going forward.