Social media is ablaze with fake claims regarding the 2023 World Cup final tournament, following Australia’s commanding six-wicket victory. A Pakistani handle @/ahadfooty (Archived link), on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) claimed that the former Australian Captain Ricky Ponting has criticized India’s cricket board BCCI and said “This is a win of justice against cricket mafia.” The user while making this claim wrote, “Ricky Ponting on Fox Cricket: “This is a win of justice against cricket mafia. Your money and power is still not winning World Cups for you. How embarrassing.” Ponting owned India and BCCI.” The tweet has so far garnered 23.5k likes.
The Indian National Congress worker Aabid Mir Magami (Archived link) made the same claim with the same caption as @/ahadfooty. It’s amusing to see how the INC worker is taking pride in India’s humiliation on the public platform.
Moreover, the claim of Ricky Ponting humiliating BCCI and India was also propagated by the retired IPS officer Vijay Shanker Singh (Archived link).
Many other Islamist handles from Pakistan who shared this claim were Aamir Mumtaz (Archived link), Momina (Archived link), and King Babar Azam Army (Archived link).
In our fact check research, we came across a Fox Cricket article in which Ricky Ponting made a subtly suggestion that India’s purported pitch manipulation backfired in the ICC World Cup 2023 finals.
The statement Ponting made in reference to Indian pitches was, “It was very, very sub-continental conditions today. A wicket preparation that has probably ended up backfiring on India to be totally fair.”
We further looked for more articles on Fox Cricket website but despite our best efforts, we were unable to locate any reports that would support the viral claim. Furthermore, we searched for media reports using the keywords “Ricky Ponting called BCCI mafia,” but we were unable to find any. The news media would have undoubtedly covered this news if Ponting had made such a controversial statement.
In the last step, we scrutinized Ponting’s social media handles but failed to find any such statement. We found that the claim has originated from Pakistan. The claim was first shared by the account @/ahadfooty, which quickly garnered a lot of attention. This account has already drawn attention for disseminating false information ascribed to well-known cricketers. Following Australia’s win, a trend of many Pakistani accounts participating in the spread of bogus information to mock India’s defeat has been seen.
In conclusion, Ponting did not refer to the BCCI as the “cricket mafia,” hence the claim going viral on social media is fake.
| Claim | Ricky Ponting refer to the BCCI as the cricket mafia |
| Claimed by | Aabid Mir Magami, retired IPS officer Vijay Shanker Singh, and Pakistani handles @/ahadfooty, Aamir Mumtaz, Momina, and Babar Azam’s fan account |
| Fact Check | Fake |
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