India defeated Pakistan thrice in Asia Cup 2025 and no handshake drama overshadowed everything.
A BCCI official has reportedly responded to former England captain Michael Atherton’s call to reduce or completely stop India v Pakistan matches in ICC and ACC events until the two countries come to a solution.
His views came after the recent drama in the Asia Cup 2025 tournament, where Indian players refused to shake hands with Pakistani teams and, after defeating them in the final of the tournament, refused to take the trophy from ACC chief Mohsin Naqvi, who is also the interior minister of Pakistan and chief of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).
Former England captain Michael Atherton asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) not to schedule any more India-Pakistan games until the matter was handled.
“If cricket was once the vehicle for diplomacy, it is now, clearly, a proxy for broader tensions and for propaganda. There is little justification, in any case, for a serious sport to arrange tournament fixtures to suit its economic needs, and now that the rivalry is being exploited in other ways, there is even less justification for it. For the next broadcast rights cycle, the fixture draw before ICC events should be transparent, and if the two teams do not meet every time, so be it,” Atherton wrote in his column for The Times.
Reacting to Atherton's call, a BCCI official said that while it is easy to say that, there are no easy solutions to this issue.
“It's easy to talk about all this, but will sponsors and broadcasters agree to it? In today's situation, if any major team, not just India, withdraws from a tournament, it will be difficult to attract sponsors,” the official told Dainik Jagran.
India and Pakistan have not played any bilateral series since 2012-12, and they last played a Test in 2007. Now India and Pakistan only meet during multilateral tournaments in ICC and ACC events.