Pakistan, while being a superpower in world cricket, has always found itself in between controversies. Be it match-fixing scandals or feud between the teammates in the dressing room, Pakistan cricket has seen it all. One such incident which made a lot of noise in the late 2000s was the fight between former Pakistani bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif which also included Shahid Afridi. let’s discuss What happened between Afridi and Asif?
What happened between Afridi and Asif?
During the inaugural season of the ICC T20I World Cup in 2007, Shoaib Akhtar reportedly slammed his Pakistani teammate Asif with a bat for a prank he pulled on the ‘Rawalpindi Express’ with Afridi. The reports were later confirmed by PCB due to which Akhtar was called back from the World Cup in South Africa. Akhtar went on to mention the incident in his autobiography “Controversially Yours”.
Mohammad Asif asked Akhtar to “Shut Up”
As it happened, Akhtar has spoken about the incident plenty of times in the past years. Asif, who was banned from Pakistan cricket due to his involvement in the 2010 match-fixing controversy, seemingly had too much of Akhtar stretching the incident. Asif, in a recent interview, revealed that he recently ringed up Akhtar to “move on” from the incident.
“The dressing room spat with Shoaib Akhtar in 2007 was an incident that Shoaib has lived off for 13 years. He has made so many comments about it and has kept on bringing it up whenever he can. Well, I had enough, so I called him up recently and told him to shut up about the incident and move on from it. I told him to get over what happened, it’s history now,” Asif told Pak Passion.
“One day he’s dreaming of being the Chief Selector, the next day he’s dreaming about being Pakistan’s Head Coach or Chairman PCB, he needs to get back to reality and actually focus on helping young cricketers instead of chatting about something that happened more than 13 years ago,” the former right-arm pacer asserted.
