The Verdict: Fake
- Australian skipper Pat Cummins did not make a statement criticizing the Ahmedabad crowd. The viral quote attributed to him is fake.
What is the claim?
The Australian cricket team beat Team India in the ICC Cricket World Cup final held at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad on November 19, 2023. In the wake of Australia winning the World Cup, a quote attributed to Australian team captain Pat Cummins has surfaced on social media platforms.
One such post shared on X (formerly Twitter) read, "Indian crowd is usually amazing but crowd at Ahmedabad is not, they booed Babar in the first match too. We wanted to silence this crowd in the last match. Thats why I said it and we did it- Pat Cummins (sic).” Archives of similar posts can be seen here, here, here, and here.
However, we found that Cummins neither made such a statement about the Ahmedabad crowd nor brought up Pakistan team captain Babar Azam in the post-match interviews.
What did we find out?
We looked for news reports about the Australian captain criticizing the crowd, but the search yielded no relevant results. No reports mentioned Cummins making any such statement, as claimed in the viral posts.
Next, we looked up all the pre-match and post-match interviews given by Cummins related to the World Cup finals.
In a news publication by the International Cricket Council (ICC) dated November 18, 2023, titled, “Cummins reveals Australia’s plans to handle India crowd in World Cup final,” the Australian skipper was quoted as saying, “The crowd is obviously going to be very one-sided, but in sport, there is nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent, and that's the aim for us tomorrow. You've just got to embrace every part of a final. Even in the lead-up, there is going to be noise and more people and interest, and you just can't get overwhelmed, you have got to be up for it, and you have got to love it.”
While he talked about the audience at the final, as seen here, Cummins did not criticize the Ahmedabad crowd or mention Azam.
We came across another post-match video on the OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar where Cummins spoke to the presenter and former Indian cricketer Ravi Shastri. In this video, Shastri asked Cummins what it felt like playing in front of a nearly 125,000-strong crowd. To this, Cummins replied, “It was awesome.” He also said, “A couple of times it got loud and got really loud… But fantastic. The passion in India is unrivaled in the world.”
Even here, he did not criticize the crowd but praised them for being passionate about the game. He also did not mention Pakistan captain Azam, as claimed in the viral posts.
Similarly, in the post-match interview that Cummins gave to reporters, while he did revel in their success, he did not criticize the crowd. When a reporter asked him about Indian cricketer Virat Kohli’s dismissal, Cummins noted, "We did take a second in the huddle just to acknowledge the silence that was going around the crowd. Yeah, it just felt like it was one of those days where it was all made for him to score another hundred like he normally does, and yeah, that was satisfying.”
The full video of Cummins’ post-match press conference has been shared along with the transcript on the Cricket World website. Multiple people have also shared the same video on YouTube.
The verdict
Pat Cummins did not criticize the Ahmedabad crowd after the ICC Cricket World Cup final or say that the Australian cricket team wanted to silence them. Neither did he mention the name of Pakistan cricketer Babar Azam in his post-match speeches after winning the cricket World Cup on November 19. The quote attributed to him that is circulating online is fake.
This statement by Cummins came during a press conference on the eve of the World Cup final. In a YouTube video shared by Star Sports of the same press conference, he can also be heard saying the same thing.
This report first appeared on logicallyfacts.com, and has been republished on ABP Live as part of a special arrangement.