Pakistan’s Saim Ayub, who will be facing India for the first time ever in Sunday’s Asia Cup encounter after missing out last year’s T20 World Cup match due to injury, had a pointed reply to a question in the press conference on how he felt after losing to India in New York.
“Sir, it has been a year and half. At that time, if you had asked me, I would have told you how I felt. Do you remember? I do not remember now,” Ayub said.
The opener also downplayed the pressure aspect of the game, refusing to give the India match any added importance.
“I think this is the message of our team management for the last three-four months. The most important thing is to learn from the past and move forward. We don’t want to remember the past and don’t want to focus too much on the future. It is going to be a big match for the people. We do not see it like this as a team. We see that we follow the same process day by day in the next match,” he said.
“Memories do not matter. This tournament matters the most. We are not just looking forward to the Pakistan-India match. We are looking forward to win the tournament,” the 23-year-old added.
The youngster hasn’t had the best of form in the shortest format recently with his last four games yielding scores of 0, 17, 11 and 0. But the player had a decent spell with the ball in the opening match against Oman where he snapped up 2 wickets for just 8 runs in 2 overs on Friday.
“It’s in our hands to just make an effort. No one can tell who will perform at the end of the day. We all trust each other,” he said.
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India and Pakistan will lock horns on Sunday in their first match since the Pahalgam terror attacks where 26 civilians lost their lives, the aftermath of which almost pushed both countries to the brink of war earlier this year.
