By Archis Chowdhury
A video showing cricket spectators engaged in a brawl at a stadium is going viral with the claim that it shows Afghan and Pakistani cricket fans fighting after the recent match between the two teams at the Asia Cup 2022.
BOOM found these claims to be misleading; while the video does show Afghan and Pakistani cricket fans clashing, it is old, and was taken during the ICC World Cup 2019.
Afghanistan and Pakistan faced each other at the Asia Cup 2022 on September 7 at Sharjah, with the latter winning a close battle with one wicket and four balls remaining. Things took an ugly turn when Pakistan's Asif Ali clashed with Afghanistan's Fareed Ahmed Malik, followed by fans of both the teams clashing each other in the stadium, leading to a riot-like situation.
Since the event, BOOM has observed a surge in videos of cricket fans engaging in brawls being falsely linked to the match.
The viral video, which shows fans clashing - with some of them sporting the Pakistani flag, was shared by a Facebook user with the caption, "Afghanistan and Pakistan fans fought with each other."
(Original text in Hindi अफगानिस्तान और पाक के फैंस आपस में भिड़े)
Click here to see the Facebook video.
We also found several other users sharing the video with similar captions. To see more such posts click here, here and here.
Fact-Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search with a keyframe from the video, which led us to an article by British tabloid newspaper The Sun about clashes breaking out between Afghan and Pakistani cricket fans at Headingley Stadium during the ICC World Cup 2019.
The article contains a longer version of the viral footage, along with several screenshots which match the keyframes in the viral video.
Taking cue from this, we performed a keyword search with "pakistan afghanistan fans clashing icc world cup 2019", which led us to multiple news articles on this event.
An article by Indian Express reported, "At least two fans have been evicted from the Headingley Carnegie premises at Leeds after clashes broke out between the faithful of Pakistan and Afghanistan during the World Cup match."
The video is over three years old, and is unrelated to the recent clashes between the fans of both the teams.
