Afghanistan Players Involved in an Altercation Ahead of ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 Defeat to England

As if things were not already bad enough for the Afghanistan cricket team, a whole new can of worms was opened. As it turns out, some of the Afghanistan players were involved in an altercation in a restaurant in Manchester.

According to the Manchester police, some of the Afghanistan players at the Akbar’s Restaurant, did not take too kindly to being filmed. Some of the players confronted the offender and the situation spiralled out of control from there.

On one hand, it seemed fairly rude for well-known people to deny fans something as banal as a picture or a video. However, on the other hand, their irritation is fairly understandable as they possibly wanted to be left alone ahead of their match against hosts, England. Though, if we’re being honest, it was less of a match and more of a massacre.

England set a daunting tally of 397 and it was almost a given that England had it in the bag. But one could not fault the plucky Afghans from trying to achieve that target. Sadly in the end, Afghanistan were bundled out for 8 wickets with 247 runs on the board.

What this meant was that the Afghans suffered a 150-run defeat. Coming back to the altercation, according to a Greater Manchester Police statement, “Shortly after 11.15pm on Monday, 17 June, 2019, police were called to reports of an altercation at a premises on Liverpool Road in Manchester. Officers attended the scene. No one was injured and no arrests have been made. Enquiries are ongoing.”

During the press conference, skipper Gulbadin Naib was questioned about the fracas, to which he revealed that he was not present. He said, “I didn’t know anything about it. We have a manager and we have a security officer, you (need to) ask them,”