Shoaib Akhtar often brings up the controversial incident in 2007 with Mohammad Asif.
Former Pakistan pacer Mohammad Asif wants his ex-teammate, Shoaib Akhtar, to move on from their controversial incident in 2007. Akhtar had hit Asif with a bat when they were in South Africa for the ICC World T20. He was later sent back home for his behavior.
Akhtar keeps on talking about the incident in different interviews. He has also mentioned it in his autobiography 'Controversially Yours'. Akhtar claimed that he was provoked by Shahid Afridi.
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“Afridi was aggravating the situation and I swung the bat at both of them. Afridi ducked, but Asif couldn’t get out of the way, the bat struck him on his thighs and he collapsed. I had lost it. I had never behaved like this, especially in the dressing room,” wrote Shoaib in his autobiography.
Now, Asif has opened up on the incident and he wants Akhtar to end the discussion on something which happened 13 years back. He called Akhtar and told him to ‘shut up' about the spat.
“The dressing room spat with Shoaib Akhtar in 2007 was an incident that Shoaib Akhtar has lived off for 13 years. He has made so many comments about it and has kept on bringing it up whenever he can. Well, I had enough, so I called him up recently and told him to shut up about the incident and move on from it. I told him to get over what happened, it’s history now. Instead of talking about that incident in every interview, I told him to talk sense, talk about how he can help young cricketers in Pakistan.
"One day he’s dreaming of being the Chief Selector, the next day he’s dreaming about being Pakistan’s Head Coach or Chairman PCB, he needs to get back to reality and actually focus on helping young cricketers instead of chatting about something that happened more than 13 years ago,” Asif told Pak Passion.
Recently, Afridi had also talked about the incident in an interview and denied escalating the situation. “Things happen,” Afridi told Samaa.tv. “Asif had sided with me in a joke which enraged Shoaib and all this happened. But Shoaib has a very beautiful heart.”