Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Shami engaged in some pleasantries on Twitter after Pakistan's loss.
Pakistan was handed a 5-wicket defeat by Jos Buttler’s England team who became only the second team to win the T20 World Cup twice after West Indies. The Babar Azam-led side was outplayed on a tricky MCG wicket by England bowlers as the batters could only manage 137/8 in 20 overs.
Then despite a valiant effort from Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah, Ben Stokes with a sublime unbeaten fifty and contributions from captain Buttler, Harry Brook, and Moeen Ali resulted in England becoming the new T20 world champions.
Right after the match ended, Akhtar had taken to Twitter to post the emoticon of broken hearts. There were no words written, nor were there any hashtags. Shami retweeted the post and wrote, “Hello brother, it's call karma”, followed by those same broken-heart emojis.
Then Akhtar hit back at Shami as well and the online exchange of words became the talk of the town on Twitter.
Now Wasim Akram has spoken on this war of words between the cricketers from the two nations and said that we are all patriotic about our own countries and we should be neutral rather than responding to such tweets.
“We should stay neutral. Indians are patriotic about their country, and I'm fine with that, we are patriotic about our country. But instead of that, jalti pe tel daalna, tweet pe tweet karna, just don't do it man,” Akram said on A Sports show ‘The Pavilion’.
On the same show, Misbah Ul Haq added, “You shouldn't do this just for the sake of few 'Likes'. Cricketers, whether from India or Pakistan or any other country, we are all a family. So we should respect each other and give our opinions respectfully. We also have a certain responsibility.”