Misbah ul Haq slams Indian players for handshake snub: ‘Cricket ka maqsad kuch aur hai… what are you trying to do?’

Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Mohsin Naqvi, through an X post which he later deleted, said that Pakistan had also lodged a formal complaint against match referee Andy Pycroft with the ICC as the official had requested the captains “not to shake hands during the toss”.

In his tweet, Naqvi is reported to have said: “Let’s hope future victories are celebrated by all teams with grace.”

If you bring any political statement or even a gesture to the cricket field, there are very heavy penalties, and you can even get a ban as a player.

When asked about this tweet from Naqvi and the gesture from India on the Game on Hai show on PTV Sports, Misbah said: “There are very strict regulations in the sport for these kinds of things (political gestures from players or teams). You see, if you bring any political statement or even a gesture to the cricket field, there are very heavy penalties, and you can even get a ban as a player. So I think it’s absolutely not allowed, and one word was very important in this tweet from Mohsin Naqvi: grace. Whoever is doing this is just losing grace.

Misbah continued: “Where India should have given an answer to something, you should have responded there. This is a cricket field. Why are you mixing those things? So this is a strange mindset that no one in the world can understand. What are they basically trying to do? It’s like, where should they vent their anger? This is not on! What is sports, basically? You go, you play, it’s a test of your skills. That’s it. A cricketer, or any player on the field, goes to entertain the crowd. Their purpose is completely different. You are connecting it with everything, which I think is not the correct way to go about it. It’s very disappointing, and it’s not understandable what they are trying to do.”

The match between India and Pakistan was played under a heavy cloud of criticism since it was the first time that the two arch-rivals were meeting in a cricket match after the heinous Pahalgam terror attack. India had responded to the terror attack by launching Operation Sindoor.

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