In a TV appearance, motormouth Pakistani cricketer and Former Captain of their cricket team Shahid Afridi has claimed that Indian cricketers have started eating meat which is the reason behind their improved performance as it gives them strength.
It was a local sports show in Pakistan where Afridi (claimed to be 43 years old) was asked about the transformation in Indian cricket. The query was focused on the reformation of Indian cricket from being renowned for producing exceptional batters to also emerging as a source of outstanding bowlers.
To which, Afridi made the observation. He said, “India has a huge 1.4 billion population, and the quality of cricket has changed [over the years]. Back then we used to say that they were producing great batters while Pakistan was creating good bowlers, but that was not the case as we were generating both bowlers and batters.”
He said, “However, their bowlers have now started eating meat, so they have gained strength,” and he chuckled after making the observation. Notably, Pakistan has been notorious for using such slurs asking Indians to eat meat as they consider Indians as meek Hindus who are afraid of their ‘martial race’.
Recently, screenshots of old anti-India and anti-Hindu tweets of Pakistani presenter Zainab Abbas also surfaced online when she was on a visit to India to host the World Cup as a presenter for the ICC Men’s World Cup 2023. In her old tweets, she had written deplorable things mocking India and Hindus telling them to eat meat and using phrases like ‘stinking cow piss’ to describe India’s capital Delhi.
Meanwhile, on the sports show, Afridi tried to cover his brazen bigotry by attributing other factors like IPL, captains like Sourav Ganguly and MS Dhoni, and improvement in domestic cricket behind India’s better performance.
He added, “First Sourav Ganguly made so many changes during his captaincy and then the way MS Dhoni carried all the seniors with him. They [BCCI] invested in the right place. They improved their grassroots level cricket by giving the entire domestic system to a player like Rahul Dravid, who knows what the kids [domestic players] need to reach the top. They worked hard, and now they keep on producing talents. If India wants, they can create two teams now.”
It is pertinent to note that the current cricketing legend and among the Greatest of all times (GOAT), Virat Kohli had in September 2019 asserted that he has never felt better in his life since he turned vegetarian. Back then, he also praised a documentary that celebrates plant-based eating. Since then, he has maintained that he is vegetarian.
During a question-and-answer session, Kohli talked about his diet and revealed that his diet mainly comprises “lots of vegetables, some eggs, 2 cups of coffee, dal, quinoa, lots of spinach, and dosa”.
With arduous efforts over the course of several years, India has built a battery of world-class fast bowlers in the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd Shami, Mohd Siraj, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, and newcomers like Arshdeep Singh and Prasidh Krishna among others. Interestingly, a multitude of Indian cricketers adhere to a vegetarian diet and have outperformed Pakistani cricketers.
However, Afridi’s comment is not an isolated incidence as the Pakistani cricketing squad is notorious for exploiting the wider reach of cricket as a sport to further their agenda of promoting Islam and proselytisation.
