Hitting back at conspiracy theorists, Pakistani greats, Shoaib Akhtar, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, dismissed match-fixing allegations after Afghanistan lost to India in a T20 World Cup match on Wednesday.
The defeat raised more than a few eyebrows on social platforms. #WellPaidIndia and #FixedMatch trended on Twitter in Pakistan.
Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry’s retweets also showed he was in support of the accusation.
However, Pakistan’s legendary pacers, reacted strongly and defended Afghan team.
Shoaib Akhtar requested his followers to refrain from accusing Afghanistan of fixing, saying “it is not right. Please do not run this trend.”
The Rawalpindi Express said there were Shariah courts in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and so their national cricketers, in theory, could be summoned over such allegations.
He stressed that Afghanistan were up against “one of the best teams of the format [India]” and they just failed on merit. “India could be potential contenders of the semi-finals by winning the next two matches convincingly.”
Wasim Akram reminded the fans that India was a “very good team”.
“I don’t know why we like to create such conspiracy theories? India are a very good side and they just had a bad start to the tournament. Rohit Sharma is one of the best players in the world cricket. Afghan bowlers probably got frozen, we must understand that,” Akram said in his post-match analysis on A Sports channel .
Waqar Younis also agreed with Akram’s assessment, saying such conspiracy theories were “pointless”.
