The Asia Cup 2025 for Pakistan has become less about cricket and more about theatre. While India cruised into the final unbeaten, Pakistan’s off-field antics continue to be more fine-tuned than their performances on the ground. The latest controversy involves Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chief and Asian Cricket Council (ACC) chairman Mohsin Naqvi, who on Wednesday evening, decided to stoop a new low. He advocated Haris Rauf’s controversial “plane going down” gesture, this time, using a video of Cristiano Ronaldo.
Awful from ACC President
Naqvi, who is also Pakistan’s Interior Minister, posted a slow-motion clip of Ronaldo on ‘X’ during India’s match against Bangladesh. The video showed the Portuguese star making a dipping-hand motion, which Naqvi sought to twist into a fighter-jet falling gesture, the very act that has already landed Haris Rauf in hot water. For the man tasked with running the Asia Cup, it is quite childish, or rather, silly on his part. Yes, he hails from the other side of the border; you ought to act in a certain way as a president of a tournament that has eight teams.
The chain of events began last Sunday when Rauf, trolled by Indian fans with “Kohli, Kohli” chants in Dubai, responded by mimicking a crashing fighter jet. He repeated the same gesture while celebrating Sanju Samson’s dismissal, clearly dragging geopolitics onto a cricket field. What does the gesture mean? Well, it is nothing but Pakistan’s unproven claim of downing six Indian jets during border tensions following the Pahalgam terror attack.
As if that was not inflammatory enough, Pakistan opener Sahibzada Farhan pulled out a “gun-firing” celebration after his half-century, something that caught many viewers off-guard after the Pakistani terror attack in Kashmir, India. With Naqvi now amplifying these gestures on social media, the controversy has now been a total embarrassment for PCB. A complete mockery of ACC’s chair post.
Naqvi’s decision to fan the flames has not gone unnoticed by BCCI or ICC officials, who are already processing India’s formal complaints against Rauf and Farhan. Whether any action is taken against Naqvi himself remains unknown (as of yet). But his tweet was certainly an awful one.
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