No, Sunil Gavaskar did not accuse BCCI of letting India down as Pakistan social media users claim.
Claim
Sunil Gavaskar on NDTV: It should be a matter of utter shame for us as Indians for politicizing, ruining and basically hijacking this beautiful game of cricket. BCCI has let India down and tonight’s results are a testimony of it.
Rating
Explanation
The matches of Asia Cup 2023 are being jointly hosted by Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This is the first Asia Cup to be co-hosted by multiple countries with four matches in Pakistan and nine in Sri Lanka. Earlier, Pakistan was scheduled to host the entire tournament but BCCI stated players’ safety reasons to not play in Pakistan and finally, Sri Lanka was added as co-host of the tournament. The matches have started as scheduled from 31, August 2023.
The much-awaited India vs. Pakistan was called off on September 2 due to rain. After this incident, Pakistan social media users criticised the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) mentioning that this was a forecast and though there were options to play in UAE, Sri Lanka was chosen showing the politics in sports.
Meanwhile, it is claimed that Sunil Gavaskar, in an interview with NDTV said “It should be a matter of utter shame for us as Indians for politicizing, ruining and basically hijacking this beautiful game of cricket. BCCI has let India down and tonight’s results are a testimony of it.” Some of the posts with such claims can be seen here, here and here.
What is the truth?
We came across a quote post by Rohan Gavaskar, son of Sunil Gavaskar mentioning that the viral claim is false and that his father hasn’t made any such statement.
This is a completely fabricated statement attributed to my father . He hasn’t made this statement and someone is just trying to create mischief . It’s absolutely ridiculous that people would use his name to get more engagement . Please retweet so that the truth prevails https://t.co/UNLOk5GVXr
— Rohan Gavaskar (@rohangava9) September 3, 2023
He also added “Someone is just trying to create mischief. It’s absolutely ridiculous that people would use his name to get more engagement. Please retweet so that the truth prevails.” He further mentions that Sunil Gavaskar is under contract with India today so he would not speak to NDTV.
We searched for the recent interview of Sunil Gavaskar to find out if he has spoken about BCCI as claimed. We found a video of his interview on India Today but could not find him speaking as the viral posts claim. The video is titled ‘Asia Cup 2023: Sunil Gavaskar brushes aside top-order concern after failure vs Pakistan”.
The description part reads “Sunil Gavaskar has brushed aside concerns about India’s top-order collapse against Pakistan in the Asia Cup 2023 on Saturday, September 2. Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer failed to make an impact during the game and fell cheaply to the Pakistan pace attack.”
Conclusion
It is found that Sunil Gavaskar did not accuse BCCI of letting India down as claimed by Pakistan social media users. All that is attributed to Sunil Gavaskar in the viral post is completely false.
