Suryakumar Yadav wants everyone to stop calling India-Pakistan cricket matches a “rivalry”.
The Indian team captain fired his salvo after swatting away the arch-rivals with a six-wicket triumph in a Super 4 match of the ongoing Asia Cup.
"Sir, my request is that we should now stop calling India vs Pakistan matches a rivalry," Sky, as he is to many fans, smilingly told a Pakistani journalist who had asked about the gulf between the two teams.
India and Pakistan have faced each other 15 times in T20 Internationals; India, the reigning world champions, have won 12 of those encounters.
When the Pakistani journalist clarified that he was referring to "standards, and not the rivalry", Suryakumar Yadav grinned.
"Sir, rivalry and standard are all the same. Now what is a rivalry? If two teams have played 15 matches and it's 8-7, that's a rivalry. Here it's 13-1 [actually 12-3] or something. There is no contest," he said.
Didn't like the way they came at us
"Today it was very simple, the way they were coming at us for no reason, I didn't like it at all and this is the only way I could give medicine to them," said opener Abhishek Sharma, who slammed a blazing 39-ball 74 to be the star of India's facile chase of 172, in the post-match presentation.
There were verbal altercations during the match. Both Abhishek and Shubman Gill (47), who.shared a 105-run opening wicket stand, had run-ins with Pakistani pacers Haris Rauf and Shaheen Shah Afridi.
Abhishek said he was delighted to have shared a wonderful partnership with Gill.
"We have been playing [together] since school days, we enjoy each other's company, we thought we would do it and today was the day. The way he was giving it back, I really enjoyed it,” he said.
"It's (the way he bats) because the team supports me. That's the intent I show and I'm practicing really hard and if it's my day, I'm gonna win it for my team," he added.
Ace pacer Jasprit Bumrah had an off-day, conceding over 10 runs an over during his four-over spell. But skipper Suryakumar did not read too much into it.
"That's fine, he's not a robot, he will have a bad day someday. But [Shivam] Dube bailed us out of the situation," he said.
"The way the boys are stepping up in every game, it's making my job very easy. The boys showed a lot of character,” the skipper said. "They were calm after the first 10 overs. After drinks, I told them the game starts now.”