Follow UsFormer Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik has said India will regret refusing to accept the Asia Cup 2025 trophy after their five-wicket win over Pakistan in the final in Dubai on September 28 (Sunday). Indian T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav and his team declined to collect the trophy from Asian Cricket Council (ACC) president Mohsin Naqvi, who is also Pakistan’s Interior Minister and PCB chairman.
Reports said Khalid Al Zarooni, vice-chairman of the Emirates Cricket Board, was supposed to present the trophy to Suryakumar. However, Naqvi walked out of the Dubai International Cricket Stadium with the Asia Cup 2025 trophy and the winners’ medals.
“Just see how much pressure the players went through to win the Asia Cup. How much heat there was that they played in. They worked so hard. Why did they do all that hard work? To win the Asia Cup trophy, to win the tournament! And after they’ve worked so hard, you don’t even come to take the trophy. It was such a big achievement, and that too after such a close match. It’s a massive moment,” Malik said on the Game On Hai show.
“Look, today, they might be celebrating this thing like this. But down the line, after a few years, this will haunt them. They’ll think: ‘We won the trophy, we worked hard’. They are athletes and sportsmen. A sportsman’s job is to come to the ground, give your best shot, and that’s it.”
Meanwhile, SKY mimicked lifting the trophy and walked toward his teammates, similar to what Rohit Sharma did after India’s 2024 T20 World Cup win. The rest of the squad joined in and posed as if they were holding the real trophy.