SKY on not receiving the Asia Cup trophy: Never seen a champion team being denied a hard-earned trophy yet.
After India’s squad lost the Asia Cup trophy on Sunday night in Dubai, captain Suryakumar Yadav (SKY) claimed he had “never seen” a champion team denied a well-earned prize. He maintained, however, that he was not “disappointed.”
“This is one thing which I have never seen since I have started playing cricket, since I have started following cricket that a champion team is denied to get a trophy,” Suryakumar said. “That too a hard-earned one, it’s not like we got it easily. It was a hard-earned tournament. We were here since the 4th [September], played two back-to-back good games. I feel we deserved it. I can’t say anything more, I think I have summed it up really well, I can’t say anything more about it.
“We can’t say we were disappointed. But if you see, we had a lot of smiles on our faces as we were on the ground enjoying the moment on the podium,” he added.
The post-match presentation was delayed for a long time because India declined to accept the Asia Cup trophy from Mohsin Naqvi, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board and president of the Asian Cricket Council. The champions didn’t hold a trophy at the conclusion of the evening because of the impasse.
Later, Suryakumar explained that the players, not the officials, had decided not to accept the award from Naqvi. He claimed that he was not aware of any formal correspondence about the presentation between the ACC and the BCCI.
“I have no idea about this [any communication between BCCI and ACC]. We took this call on the ground. No one told us to do this,” Suryakumar said.
“Rinku Singh hit a four. India won the Asia Cup. After that, we came out and we were celebrating and we applauded every player’s achievement. Tilak, Kuldeep and Abhishek got a car. We celebrated that too. So, what more do you want? This was the chain of events that we wanted to achieve.
“And we also saw that the champions’ (flexi) board came and went back. We saw that too. It’s okay. It keeps on happening. It’s a part of life.”