Fact Check: India-Pak Champions Trophy cricket match—Did Bengaluru man support Pakistan over India? Here’s the truth
A viral video claiming to show a Bengaluru man supporting Pakistan over India during the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 has gone viral.
By M Ramesh Naik Published on 25 Feb 2025 3:35 PM IST
Claim: The video shows a Bengaluru man supporting Pakistan in the recent ICC Champions Trophy match against India.
Fact: The claim is false. The video is old, edited selectively and unrelated to the India-Pakistan ICC Champions Trophy match.
Hyderabad: India defeated Pakistan by six wickets in a one-sided ICC Champions Trophy 2025 clash on Sunday, putting themselves in a strong position to qualify for the semifinals. India dismissed Pakistan for 241, with Saud Shakeel scoring 62 off 76 balls and captain Mohammad Rizwan managing 46 from 77 deliveries.
Amid the post-match discussions, a video surfaced on social media claiming that a Bengaluru man was seen supporting Pakistan during the recent India-Pakistan cricket encounter.
In the video, the man introduces himself as Sudikshit from Bengaluru and says that he supports Pakistan because it is India’s neighbour. He names a few Pakistani players as among his favourites. A person wearing an Australian jersey can be seen behind him.
An X user shared the video with the caption, “100% support to Pakistan saar from Bangalore #INDvsPAK #ViratKohli. (sic)” (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video is old and unrelated to the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy 2025.
A keyword search led us to a YouTube channel named Saleem Khaliq. Upon scanning the channel, we found a longer version of the video uploaded on October 20, 2023, with the caption, “Indian fan supporting Pakistani team at Chinnaswamy Stadium Bengaluru.”
In the 42-second footage, the man can be seen saying, “…(supporting) Pakistan team because it is a neighbouring country, and Australia is anyway very strong. We should support our neighbouring country. I support Australia too. But, today I am personally supporting Pakistan…” Notably, the viral version of the video has been edited to remove the part where he said that he also supports Australia to make it look like he is speaking about the recent India-Pak match.
Further analysis of the footage showed that Sudikshit is wearing the green Pakistani jersey with the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 logo. The India-Pakistan match was part of the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 tournament.
The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup in 2023 was the 13th edition of the tournament, hosted by India from October 5 to November 19 across ten venues.
Using the information we gathered so far, we found an India Today report titled ‘World Cup 2023: Pakistan suffer back-to-back defeats, lose to Australia by 62 runs after India thumping.’ It was published on October 20, 2023, linking the match to the two persons in the video sporting the Pakistani and Australian jerseys.
The report detailed that Australia secured a 62-run victory against Pakistan at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
Therefore, the viral video is from the 2023 World Cup and is unrelated to the ICC Champions Trophy 2025. The claim that it shows a Bengaluru man supporting Pakistan during the recent India-Pakistan match is false.
