Pakistan’s men’s cricket team captain, Mohammad Rizwan, on Sunday, February 23, accepted that the Men in Green’s Champions Trophy title defence has come to an end after they went down by six wickets against India in Match No. 5 of the Champions Trophy 2025 played at Dubai International Cricket Stadium. In the must-win match for the hosts of the ongoing ninth edition of the Champions Trophy, Rizwan won the toss and opted to bat first, but his decision backfired as the Pakistani team could only manage to score 241 runs for the loss of 10 wickets in 49.4 overs.
Rizwan said he does not like progressing through the back door. "As a captain, I honestly don't like this. If you can win, then do it. If you can't, then don't worry about it. I don't care if you are sitting in someone else's shadow."I don't care if you are outside the tournament or in it. Yes, New Zealand has defeated us; India has defeated us. We accept it. We can play well; we can play badly. We can't say that we should stay on someone else's side. Allah has made this a chance, we can't say anything about it."He continued on the topic. "In the next match, we'll see what Bangladesh does with New Zealand, what New Zealand does with India, and what we do. It's a long journey. Yes, we have hope and belief in Allah. Our dependence on the Champions Trophy has now come on other teams." Pakistan are the defending champions.
Rizwan stood by Pakistan's decision to field just one specialist spinner, Abrar Ahmed, dismissing any doubts. India, on the other hand, came into the tournament with four spinners and three of them were in the XI on Sunday. "You can't say that we made a mistake by picking just one spinner. If you look at that Indian team also they have Kuldeep (Yadav) as the front-line spinner. (Ravindra) Jadeja and Axar Patel are all-rounders. We also have Salman Ali Agha and Khushdil Shah. They bowled very well in the past." The Pakistan skipper also agreed that their middle-order did not fire. "The middle-order was not good enough. Yesterday in our meeting we had discussed that on this pitch 270-280 runs would be enough. Because the outfield was slow and the pitch was slow. If we had scored 280, maybe the results would be different. "Me (46) and Saud Shakeel (62) tried to build a partnership and took a lot of time. But after that, the shot selection was poor and that's where they got a chance to take our wickets. After that our middle-order couldn't take the pressure and we couldn't manage."