LAHORE: Pakistan legends Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar slammed fans for promoting match-fixing conspiracy theories against Afghanistan on social media following their loss to India in a T20 World Cup match.
Speaking during a live transmission, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis reacted strongly against such allegations as they came to the defence of the Afghan team and told fans that the Indian team was always capable of delivering such drubbings.
“I don’t know why we like to create such conspiracy theories? India is a very good team. They just had couple of bad days at the start of the tournament,” said Akram, adding, “Rohit Sharma is one of the best players in the world cricket. Afghan bowlers probably got frozen, we must understand that.”
His ex-bowling partner, Waqar Younis, referred to the conspiracy theories as “pointless”. “People should not give it much attention,” the former fast bowler added.
Meanwhile, Rawalpindi Express Shoaib Akhtar requested his followers to refrain from accusing Afghanistan of fixing, saying “it is not right. Please do not run this trend.” He said there were Shariah courts in the Taliban-run Afghanistan and so their national cricketers, in theory, could be summoned over such allegations.
Akhtar further said that Afghanistan were up against “one of the best teams of the format ” and they just failed on merit. “India could be potential contenders of the semi-finals by winning the next two matches convincingly,” he added.
India’s heavy defeats at the hands of Pakistan and New Zealand meant they needed to win the rest of their Group 2 matches by big margins in order to keep their campaign alive.
India thumped Afghanistan by 66 runs on Wednesday night to win their first match of the T20 World Cup. A 140-run partnership between Rohti Sharma (74) and KL Rahul (69) helped India post its largest total in the tournament on the scoreboard, 210.
The one-sided nature of the defeat coupled with a poor effort in the field raised more than a few eyebrows on social platforms where hashtags such as #WellPaidIndia and #FixedMatch trended, to which Pakistan fans keen to see the back of India contributed heavily.
