Shoaib Akhtar has said that his comments about religious discrimination in the Pakistan cricket team were overplayed and taken out of context. Shoaib’s comment comes after former Pakistan players like Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Yousuf Shahid Afridi refuted all the allegations and essentially gave examples of the religious harmony that existed not just within the Pakistan team but also with the neighbours India.
Former Pakistan pacer Shoaib Akhtar had revealed during a chat show that Danish Kaneria was treated unfairly by his Pakistani teammates because he was a Hindu. Danish Kaneria had backed up Akhtar’s comments and called on other players to come forward and confirm this.
However, Shoaib Akhtar clarified his earlier comments after receiving severe backlash from many Pakistani teammates over the shocking allegations of discrimination.
“For the past two days, a big controversy has been created around me, and I was listening and watching all this, and what I wanted to do was to carefully listen and understand what was being said by people, so I was taking my sweet time,” Shoaib Akhtar said on his YouTube channel.
“The reason I launched my YouTube channel was that, apart from entertainment and cricket talk, I talk about and preach things that bring improvement to society.” “There is an unwritten contract in the team culture which says that we will respect each other, but some hesitation was shown from the side of the players (to implement this). This is not the code of conduct of our team.” “This is due to one or two players, and such one or two players exist everywhere.”
“As a product of this society, I decided to deal with the problem then and that’s why I said sternly that I will throw you out if you talk like that.”
“And to back me up, I had another companion who said what Shoaib is saying is correct and you must not say or do such things.”
“As you may remember, Pakistan was fighting against extremism and this is about 15 years ago, and extremism had gone beyond all control.”
“All I did was talk about one or two black sheep that could be found in India or Pakistan or England or Holland anywhere in the world,” Akhtar signed off.
