BBC goofed up as they showed footage of former Pakistan fast bowler Wasim Akram in a Newsnight feature about the former teammate-turned-politician Imran Khan.
The news programme mistakenly showed Akram in Imran’s journey from cricketing hero to potential prime minister.
The presenter Evan Davis later apologized for the blunder on air at the end of the programme. "We made a mistake in our opening tonight. The footage we showed was of the cricketer Wasim Akram, not Imran Khan. Don't know how that happened, sincere apologies for that," he said.
A BBC spokesperson also expressed his regret and said, "We'd like to reiterate the sincere apology we made on air last night for an error that occurred during the programme."
"We are looking into how this mistake happened and will be tightening our processes on Newsnight to prevent an incident like this happening again," the spokesperson added.
Fans on social media had thrashed BBC for the mistake. This is not the first time BBC has made a huge blunder. Back in April, the news channel was similarly caught out for mistakenly referring to Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a live news broadcast of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London.
Apologies on our intro just then!! A bit of an error - that was Wasim Akram bowling and not Imran Khan #newsnight
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) July 25, 2018