Pat Cummins has dismissed reports claiming he criticised India for playing all their Champions Trophy 2025 matches in Dubai. The Australian captain clarified that he never made such remarks and accused certain media outlets of spreading fake news by falsely attributing quotes to him.
read more
Pat Cummins has clarified that he did not make any comments about India playing
all their Champions Trophy 2025 matches in Dubai. He stated that the media has wrongly attributed quotes to him, in which he appears to criticise India for choosing their venue and label the tournament a ‘farce’.
Champions Trophy 2025:
News |
Schedule |
Results |
Points Table
“You can’t pick and choose where you play and where you’re not going to play. I don’t see how long this can carry on for? It makes a farce of these tournaments,” Cummins has been quoted as saying by multiple media houses.
Cummins clarifies ‘fake’ quotes on India
Labelling these quotes as fake, Cummins clarified on X on Tuesday that he has never made any such comment against the Indian cricket team. “I have definitely never said this,” Cummins wrote on X while resharing the quotes wrongly attributed to him.
I have definitely never said this @codecricketau https://t.co/hUri1sK4NZ
— Pat Cummins (@patcummins30) February 25, 2025
For the unversed, the quotes were not made by Cummins but by senior English journalist Jonathan Agnew while speaking to ABC Sport. Here’s what Jonathan Agnew said: “I feel very uncomfortable about the way that India is being treated at the moment. This is wrong; if you’re going to play international tournaments, you can’t pick and choose where you play and where you’re not going to play. I don’t see how long this can carry on for? It makes a farce of these tournaments.”
This was also
covered by us in the story we did over former cricketers and veteran journalists questioning ICC and BCCI over India enjoying an advantage as a result of playing all their matches at one venue in the Champions Trophy 2025.
Former England captain Atherton has said that India are enjoying an “undeniable advantage” with all their matches in Dubai. “What about the advantage India have in playing in Dubai, only in Dubai? Which seems to me to be a hard-to-quantify advantage, but an undeniable advantage,” Atherton said on Sky Sports Podcast.
“They’re playing at just one venue. They don’t have to travel either between venues or, you know, between countries, as a lot of other teams have to do.
“Therefore, the selection, you know, can focus in on the conditions in Dubai. And obviously, they’ll know where they’re playing their semi-final as and when they get through to that. That seems to me to be an undeniable advantage, but, you know, kind of hard to quantify how big an advantage,” he said.
India’s matches were scheduled in Dubai including the Champions Trophy semi-final and final, if they qualify, after they refused to travel to Pakistan due to security issues.