Pakistan's earlier-than-expected elimination from the ongoing T20 World Cup has paved the way for different conspiracy theories in the local media. From groupism to rift withing the senion members of the team, the local media has presented several concepts to suggest the reason behind the team's disaster show in the Americas. While majority of the former players have entirely put the blame of the players, ex-captain Rashid Latif has time and time again highlighted the role PCB has played in the team’s downfall.
Earlier this week, Pakistan pacer Haris Rauf was confronted by a man on the streets of Miami, Florida. In a viral video, Haris had lost his cool at the man, who must’ve said something derrogatory to the player.
Angered by the action of the man, Haris was seen chasing the person to beat him. However, the people around them, including Haris' wife, stopped the two doing anything stupid.
PCB also reacted to the whole episode, saying that they would take legal action against the man if he refuses to apologise to Haris.
Over the past few days, there have been rumours of spot fixing circulating in the media. Latif has now targetted the PCB for not addressing the match-fixing allegations that have been doing rounds on social media.
"Pakistan's exclusion from the World Cup has caused the biggest loss to our electronic media, which includes news channels and sports broadcasters (broadcasting rights). Those who have the broadcast rights to show the match are expected to lose 30% to 35%. The ratings of the channels are also surprisingly low as the Pakistan team is back home and the news channels and sports channels are blaming the players and the team to keep themselves alive and the cricket board is a silent spectator. While in Haris Rauf's case, Chairman PCB's X message came immediately, but where a serious allegation like match-fixing was made, the entire legal department is silent and coincidentally, PCB's CEO is a lawyer by profession. People are understanding that maybe it did not change the direction of the cannons to save itself?," Latif wrote in a post on X.
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— Rashid Latif | (@iRashidLatif68) June 21, 2024
Successive poor shows in the ODI World Cup 2023 and the 2024 T20 World Cup, has put a big question mark on the Babar Azam-led Pakistan.
This time around the reaction to the exit is stronger because Pakistan started the tournament with an unexpected loss against debutants USA.
Then they loss against India. The two losses proved to be Pakistan's nemesis as they were knocked out despite winning their last two encounters.