Australia’s Cricket Victoria offers Babar Azam to play Sheffield Shield, Big Bash tournaments

Rating Justification

The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false as the chief executive of Cricket Victoria, the cricket governing body for Australia’s state of Victoria, has denied the claim.

To arrive to this verdict, the iVerify Pakistan team has investigated the claims on social media along with the social media accounts of Babar Azam and Cricket Victoria.

HOW IT STARTED

According to the iVerify Pakistan team’s investigation, the claim was shared as “breaking news” on January 11, 2024, at 11:44am by Samaa News sports journalist Qadir Khawaja on social media platform X and gained 131,000 views.

The post said:

“Cricket Victoria is interested in making a contract with former captain Babar Azam. Cricket Victoria has offered Babar Azam to play for Big Bash and state cricket. Representatives of Cricket Victoria met Babar Azam in Melbourne. Cricket Victoria is keen to offer a long-term contract to the former captain. In the meeting, Babar Azam was offered to open for Melbourne Stars or Renegades. Babar Azam has expressed conditional readiness for the contract. Babar Azam says that he will decide after seeing Pakistan’s schedule from September to January next year.”

Geo News journalist Arfa Feroz Zake also shared the same claim in a post on X the same day at 12:45pm, gaining over 274,000 views.

METHODOLOGY

The iVerify Pakistan team sought to investigate the claim due to its virality, the fact it was shared by journalists of main media outlets as well as the public’s keen interest in former Pakistan team captain Babar Azam.

The iVerify Pakistan team began its investigation by checking the official social media accounts of the former captain and Cricket Victoria but found nothing.

A search for a story about the claim on Samaa and Geo’s news portals also did not yield any report or article.

However, further searching found a reshare of Zake’s post by Cricket Victoria Chief Executive Nick Cummins on Jan 12 at 1:44pm with the simple caption: “Fake news”

In a response to another X user who criticised Khawaja for “spreading false stories”, Cummins said: “Absolutely zero truth about it. Even if we wanted him to play BBL, he’d have to go through the draft and could go to any club. Love Babar, but the story is not true.”

BACKGROUND

Cricket Victoria is the governing body for the sport of cricket in the Australian state of Victoria.

As per Cricket Australia’s website, the Marsh Sheffield Shield is recognised as one of the strongest first-class cricket competitions in the world.

Meanwhile, the Big Bash League is Australia’s premier domestic Twenty20 cricket competition.

CONCLUSION

The iVerify Pakistan team has concluded that the claim is false since the chief executive of Cricket Victoria himself debunked it and termed it “fake”.

Furthermore, no news report was found on media outlets Samaa and Geo to corroborate the claims by their reporters.

Evidence and References

Jan 11 X post of Samaa’s sport Journalist:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240112100742/https://twitter.com/iamqadirkhawaja/status/1745335796750508370

Jan 11 X post of Geo’s sports journalist:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240112100412/https://twitter.com/ArfaSays_/status/1745351309010592181

Jan 12 X post of Cricket Victoria’s chief executive:
https://web.archive.org/save/https://twitter.com/CricketVicCEO/status/1745728482863362319?t=hWo0SfRpVTR5YOdWXIDbaw&s=084

Jan 12 X response of Cricket Victoria’s chief executive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240112112024/https://twitter.com/CricketVicCEO/status/1745730313995829381

Cricket Australia website on domestic tournaments:
https://www.cricket.com.au/high-performance/domestic-cricket#:~:text=The%20Sheffield%20Shield%20occupies%20a,cricket%20competitions%20in%20the%20world