DUBAI: Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman and Asian Cricket Council (ACC) head Mohsin Naqvi has slammed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “dragging war into sport”.
Hitting back at Modi, Naqvi, who is also the country’s interior minister, said history has already recorded India’s humiliating defeats at Pakistan’s hands in the battlefield and cautioned that politicising sport with conflict reflected desperation rather than pride.
“If war was your measure of pride, history already records your humiliating defeats at Pakistan’s hands. No cricket match can rewrite that truth. Dragging war into sport only exposes desperation and disgraces the very spirit of the game,” Naqvi said in a post on X.
The statement came in response to Modi’s illogical tweet after India’s win over Pakistan in Sunday’s Asia Cup 2025 final, where the Indian premier had equated the cricket victory to “Operation Sindoor” to congratulate his players, only to invite widespread condemnation that the remark militarises a sporting event.
Taking a jibe at the Indian leader, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif also joined the criticism, saying that Modi was destroying the culture and spirit of cricket for political gain, thereby diminishing chances of peace and conflict resolution in the subcontinent.
“Modi is ending the possibilities of peace and solutions to issues in the subcontinent to save his politics by destroying the culture and spirit of cricket. Honour cannot be regained this way. The score of the Pak-India war, 6-0, has been engraved on stone. We are not saying anything but Modi has been humiliated in India and as well as in the entire world,” Asif wrote on X.
