PCB hits out at Australian news outlet over unverified personal allegations against Babar Azam

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has slammed Australian news outlet Fox Cricket for running an unverified story on skipper Babar Azam involving allegations of se*ting. An undated video of Babar was released on social media where he is allegedly se*ting with the girlfriend of another Pakistani cricketer. On Tuesday, Fox Cricket published a piece headlined ‘Cricket superstar caught up in bizarre allegations he was sexting teammate’s girlfriend’.

PCB’s response read: “As our media partner, you might have considered ignoring such unsubstantiated personal allegations which Babar Azam has not deemed worthy of a response.”

Fox Cricket has since updated its piece to mention the account to be a parody, with the introduction now saying that Babar Azam was “falsely accused of sexting a teammate’s girlfriend after videos and voice recordings went viral online”.

Meanwhile, @niiravmodi continues to tweet on the topic, including replying to Fox Cricket’s story with “Delete this tweet, “bf in team for sexting” story is false, I did this in a satirical way.” PCB’s tweet is the first instance of any response from Pakistan Cricket on the entire episode, with Babar himself staying clear of any comment. On Twitter, fans lent support for Babar with the hashtag “WeStandWithBabarAzam” trending. Others noted that teammate Imam-ul-Haq had changed his Twitter profile picture to that of Babar.