India captain Suryakumar Yadav's decision to dedicate the team's win against Pakistan in the group stage encounter earlier this month in the ongoing Asia Cup 2025 to the victims of the Pahalgam terror attack, sparked another storm. Just days after being fined by the ICC for the post-match statement, following a complaint from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), a former Indian cricketer has shockingly claimed that the India batter was “obliged” to make the statement.
Atul Wassan made the remark in conversation with NDTV, in the build-up to the historic Asia Cup final between India and Pakistan on Sunday at the Dubai International Stadium. Speaking on the ongoing row surrounding Suryakumar's remark, for which the India star was fined 30 per cent of his match fees,
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Wassan reckoned Suryakumar’s comments were more an act of 'tokenism' than genuine sentiment. The remark, he added, didn’t make the India star any less patriotic, but highlighted how optics and public pressure often drive players’ statements. He then claimed that he was "obliged" to make that statement, comparing the gesture to the acts of Haris Rauf and Shahibzada Farhan during the September 21 match between the two rivals in Dubai.
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"In India, if I say that the match should continue because the government has allowed it, everybody is coming after me, but that doesn't make me less of a patriot. If I don't mention Pahalgam, that doesn't make me less of a patriot. I am against these optics and tokenism. If he hadn't said it, he would still be a patriot, because it's given that we are all there. But this is the kind of eyeballs and tokenism that people expected, and it acted like a balm, and lapped it up. But he was obliged to say it, just like they were obliged to do that," he said.
{{/usCountry}}"In India, if I say that the match should continue because the government has allowed it, everybody is coming after me, but that doesn't make me less of a patriot. If I don't mention Pahalgam, that doesn't make me less of a patriot. I am against these optics and tokenism. If he hadn't said it, he would still be a patriot, because it's given that we are all there. But this is the kind of eyeballs and tokenism that people expected, and it acted like a balm, and lapped it up. But he was obliged to say it, just like they were obliged to do that," he said.
{{/usCountry}}Earlier this week, PCB lodged a complaint with the ICC, saying that Suryakumar's remark in the post-match presentation and the conference after the September 14 game against Pakistan breached the ICC regulation to avoid political messaging. The Pakistan board, in fact, wanted ICC to impose a Level 4 sanction - the most serious breaches of the Code of Conduct. They highlighted that the apex body, in the past, had deemed messages drawing attention to humanitarian crises as political, citing when Usman Khawaja was blocked from wearing shoes reading “Freedom is a human right” during protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.
Suryakumar reportedly pleaded not guilty, but was rejected by ICC match referee Richie Richardson, and hence a fine was imposed. BCCI has appealed against the verdict.
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