Champions Trophy – ‘What’s your focus? Ball, bat’ – Aqib Javed plays down Ind-Pak hype

Pakistan vs India matches will always inspire passions. But for Pakistan’s players, this is just another opportunity to do the cricketing things they train to do as professionals.

“For the cricketers, this is a profession,” Javed said. “For them, it definitely is an honour. But, it is a profession. You try your best. In that, you sometimes lose as well. It is a match… one team will win, one will lose. How does it matter? Why so much pressure? Every game is different.

“In a Pakistan-India game, the energy will remain high. And this is the beauty of this contest. What does the crowd do? When you play well, the crowd supports you, they clap their hands. When you play poorly, be it India or Pakistan, the home crowd will go against you. As a player, you shouldn’t keep the crowd in mind. We never kept it and neither should these players. What’s your focus? Ball, bat – that’s it.”

There is also particular focus on this game, because although Pakistan are the official hosts, they have had to travel to Dubai, where India have set up camp, and have already played a match. There have been suggestions that it is India who are enjoying the closest thing to home advantage in this scenario. But Javed played those suggestions down.

Almost all of Pakistan’s home fixtures had been played in the UAE between 2009 and 2019.

“There’s no advantage (for India) at all, because if you look at all the Pakistani players, they have been playing leagues here. The PSL has been played here. So there’s nothing really – there’s no advantage or disadvantage.”

The surface in Dubai is expected to play slower and lower than those in Pakistan, partly because the ILT20 has been played here over the past six weeks. Very few of the strips on the square are fresh surfaces.

“We also have to see the pitch and the ground here,” Javed said. “Are these similar to the one we have in Pakistan or are they different? We will play in accordance with the pitches, conditions and the opposition team.”