DUBAI
\nPakistan skipper Salman Ali Agha said Monday the team would donate their Asia Cup final match fees to families of civilians and children killed in the May Indian attacks, while slamming India\u2019s \u201cdisappointing\u201d conduct during the tournament. \u201cWhat India have done this tournament is very disappointing,\u201d Agha told reporters after the final in Dubai.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re not disrespecting us by not shaking hands, they\u2019re disrespecting cricket. Good teams don\u2019t do what they did today. We went to pose with the trophy on our own because we wanted to fulfil our obligations. We stood there and took our medals. I don\u2019t want to use harsh words but they\u2019ve been very disrespectful.\u201d Pakistan lost the final to India in a last-over thriller on Sunday.
\nThe post-match presentation was delayed for more than 90 minutes after the Indian side refused to accept the trophy from ACC president and PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi, who is also Pakistan\u2019s interior minister. It capped a series of incidents where India avoided contact with Pakistan players and officials throughout the tournament.
\nAgha said he had no personal issue with Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav and believed Yadav would have shaken hands if it had been his decision. \u201cHe shook hands with me in private at the start of the tournament,\u201d Agha said. \u201cBoth at the pre-tournament press conference and when we met in the referee\u2019s meeting.
\nBut when they\u2019re out in the world in front of the cameras, they don\u2019t shake our hands. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s following the instructions he\u2019s been given, but if it was up to him, he\u2019d shake hands with me.\u201d The Pakistan skipper said there was no precedent for teams refusing to shake hands, calling it damaging to the spirit of the game.
\n\u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve ever seen this happen,\u201d he said. \u201cWhatever happened in this tournament was very bad, and I hope it stops at some stage because it\u2019s bad for cricket. Everything that happened today was a consequence of all that happened before. Of course the ACC president will give the trophy to the winners. If you won\u2019t take the trophy from him, how will you get it?\u201d As in the previous two India-Pakistan matches, neither side exchanged handshakes before or after the final. Players stayed in separate huddles while waiting for the ceremony to begin.
\n\u201cI\u2019m not just a Pakistan captain, I\u2019m a cricket fan,\u201d Agha said. \u201cIf a kid\u2019s watching in India or Pakistan, we\u2019re not sending them a good message. People think of us as role models, but if we\u2019re behaving like this, we\u2019re not inspiring them. What happened shouldn\u2019t have happened, but you should ask the people [India] responsible for this rather than me.\u201d
\nBefore ending the press conference, Agha spoke about the team\u2019s decision to support victims of the recent Indian attacks.\u201cAs a team, we are donating our Asia Cup final match fees to the families of civilians and children affected in the Indian attacks on Pakistan,\u201d Salman Agha said in his closing remarks before wrapping up the press conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DUBAI Pakistan skipper Salman Ali Agha said Monday the team would donate their Asia Cup final match fees to families of civilians and children killed in the May Indian attacks, while slamming India\u2019s \u201cdisappointing\u201d conduct during the tournament. \u201cWhat India have done this tournament is very disappointing,\u201d Agha told reporters after the final in Dubai. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87503,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87481\/revisions\/87503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}