The Pakistan captain, Salman Agha, has backed his team’s aggressive bowling ahead of the Asia Cup 2025 finals, which is set to be staged on September 28 in Dubai.
India and Pakistan are set to face each other in the summit clash of the Continental tournament after 41 years. With dramatic incidents unfolding between the teams in the previous encounters of the tournament, Salman has made a big statement saying the side to focus on winning.
During the pre match conference, Salman Agha has spoke about the handshake row occured during the group stage games saying that he has never seen a match end without a handshake and believes such incidents set a poor sights on the spirit of the game.
The incident came when Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav refused to shake hands with his counterpart during the toss and also skipped the traditional post-match handshake.
The Men in Blues made such an gesture after Pahalgam terrorist attack earlier this year, where 26 Indian tourists lost their lives. India have retailiated with Operation Sindoor.
During the post match conference, SKY said, ““This is the perfect occasion (to state that) we stand by the victims of the families of Pahalgam terror attack. We express our solidarity.”
“Want to dedicate the win to all our armed forces who showed a lot of bravery. Hope they continue to inspire us all and we give them more reasons on the ground whenever we get an opportunity to put a smile on their face,” concluded Suryakumar Yadav.
This was even followed in the Super 4s encounter as well, with Indian team leaving the ground after exchanging handshakes with umpires.
Addressing the row, Salman Agha said, “As far as handshakes are concerned, I’ve been playing professional cricket since 2007 at the under-16 level. I’ve never seen two teams not shaking hands during the match. Even my father is a big cricket fan, I’ve heard stories about the game from him.”
“He never told me that anything like that happened in the past, that two teams playing cricket didn’t shake hands. I’ve always heard that no such thing has ever happened on a cricket field.”
“India and Pakistan have played earlier as well when the relations between the two countries were even worse. Even then, there used to be handshakes. According to me, no handshakes are not good for cricket,” said Agha in the pre-match press conference.
The finals of the Asia Cup will be played on September 21 at Dubai International Stadium, Dubai.
