India Asia squad 2025

 Suryakumar Yadav (c)

Shubman Gill (vc)

Abhishek Sharma

Tilak Varma

Hardik Pandya

Shivam Dube

Axar Patel

Jitesh Sharma (wk)

Jasprit Bumrah

Arshdeep Singh

Varun Chakravarthy

Kuldeep Yadav

Sanju Samson (wk)

Harshit Rana

Rinku Singh

New Testament athletic metaphors

Sport was an important form of worship in Ancient Greek religion. The ancient Olympic Games were held in honour of the head deity, Zeus, and featured various forms of religious dedication to him and other gods. Many Greeks travelled to see the games and the combination of religious pilgrimage and sport served as a way of uniting them as one people.

The practice of athletic competitions has been criticised by some Christian thinkers as a form of idolatry, in which "human beings extol themselves, adore themselves, sacrifice themselves and reward themselves." Sports are seen by these critics as a manifestation of "collective pride" and "national self-deification" in which feats of human power are idolised at the expense of divine worship.

Tertullian condemns the athletic performances of his day, insisting "the entire apparatus of the shows is based upon idolatry. The shows, says Tertullian, excite passions foreign to the calm temperament cultivated by the Christian:

God has enjoined us to deal calmly, gently, quietly, and peacefully with the Holy Spirit, because these things are alone in keeping with the goodness of His nature, with His tenderness and sensitiveness. ... Well, how shall this be made to accord with the shows? For the show always leads to spiritual agitation, since where there is pleasure, there is keenness of feeling giving pleasure its zest; and where there is keenness of feeling, there is rivalry giving in turn its zest to that. Then, too, where you have rivalry, you have rage, bitterness, wrath and grief, with all bad things which flow from them – the whole entirely out of keeping with the religion of Christ.

Christian clerics in the Wesleyan-Holiness movement oppose the viewing of or participation in professional sports, believing that professional sports leagues profane the Sabbath, compete with a Christian's primary commitment to God, exhibit a lack of modesty in the players' and cheerleaders' uniforms, are associated with violence and extensive use of profanity among many players, and encourage gambling, as well as alcohol and other drugs at sporting events, which go against a commitment to teetotalism.