The episode between Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Shami had unfolded moments after the Babar Azam-led side had suffered a heartbreaking defeat to England in the T20 World Cup final
The T20 World Cup did not see just battles between teams on the field, off the field, on social media, there was a war of words involving cricketers and former cricketers, especially from India and Pakistan. The latest of those being the episode between Pakistan legend Shoaib Akhtar and veteran India pacer Mohammed Shami which had unfolded moments after the Babar Azam-led side had suffered a heartbreaking defeat to England in the T20 World Cup final in Melbourne on Sunday. Speaking about these Twitter battles, former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram lashed out at these cricketers.
Moments after Pakistan’s five-wicket loss at the MCG, Akhtar had taken to Twitter to post the emoticon of broken hearts. There were no words written, neither were there any hashtags. Shami retweeted the post and wrote, “Hello brother, it’s call karma”, followed by those same broken-heart emojis. And Akhtar too hit back at the the pacer. The Twitter battle turned out to be among the most trending topics on the social-media site amid Pakistan’s loss.
During a conversation on A Sports, Akram, reacting to all these war of words on Twitter, he said that we are all patriotic about our own countries and we should be leaving it to that rather than responding to such tweets.
“We should stay neutral. Indians are patriotic about their their country, and I’m fine with that, we are patriotic about our country. But instead of that, jalti pe tel daalna, tweet pe tweet karna, just don’t do it man,” he said.
Former Pakistan captain Misbah ul Haq, who was also part of the discussion, added, “You shouldn’t do this just for the sake of few ‘Likes’. Cricketers, whether from India or Pakistan or any other country, we are all a family. So we should respect each other and give our opinions respectfully. We also have a certain responsibility.”