Fact Check: Protest against Sunrisers in Hyderabad over Abrar Ahmed signing? No, viral image is AI generated
Following the signing of Pakistan player Abrar Ahmed by Sunrisers Leeds for The Hundred 2026, the franchise faces severe backlash online.
By - K Sherly Sharon
Claim:Protests in front of Hyderabad’s Uppal Stadium against Sunrisers Leeds signing Pakistan player Abrar Ahmed for The Hundred.
Fact:The claim is false. The image is generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Hyderabad: Sunrisers Leeds, the sister franchise of the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), signed Pakistan spinner Abrar Ahmed in The Hundred 2026 auction on March 12.
The Hundred Auction is the player auction for a professional cricket league called The Hundred in England, created by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2021.
It is also called 100-ball cricket and is a shorter format of cricket where each team faces only 100 balls, instead of the usual overs used in traditional formats like Twenty20 or One Day International.
An image showing supposed protests in Hyderabad against the Sunrisers move is circulating on social media. People dressed in the signature orange-black jerseys of SRH are seen holding posters with slogans reading, ‘Shame on SRH Management’, ‘Cancel the signing’, ‘Country before cricket - SRH wake up’, and ‘No place for Abrar Ahmed in our team’.
Behind the small crowd, a board reading ‘Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium’ can be seen. The board also displays text in Telugu, indicating that the protest is taking place at the stadium, popularly known as Uppal Stadium, in Hyderabad.
Sharing this image on social media, a user wrote, “Sunrisers Hyderabad are facing heavy opposition and controversy after buying Pakistani player Abrar Ahmed. #SunrisersHyderabad #Sunrisersleeds” (Archive)
Fact Check
No evidence of protests at Uppal Stadium
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. While the signing triggered online backlash, we did not find any credible reports of protests taking place in Hyderabad or outside the Uppal Stadium.
Severe backlash followed the move as Ahmed became the first Pakistani player to be signed by a Sunrisers-owned franchise, despite reports of a ‘shadow ban’ on Pakistan cricketers at The Hundred auction.
A ‘Boycott SRH’ trend emerged, and the Sunrisers Leeds social media X account was briefly suspended.
A report published by Deccan Chronicle on March 13 discusses the backlash faced by Sunrisers for signing the Pakistan player. The report states that cricket enthusiasts called for boycotting SRH matches in the IPL and shared X posts trolling the franchise and co-owner Kavya Maran.
As of the time of publication, we did not find any news reports about protests against the Sunrisers in Hyderabad or in front of Uppal Stadium.
AI markers reveal image was generated
The English text on the sign in the image reads ‘Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium’. Although the Telugu text above it attempts to say the same, there are spelling mistakes. The image also contains Google’s AI assistant Gemini’s logo in the bottom-right corner.
This indicates the presence of AI-generated content in the image. Using Google DeepMind’s SynthID detector, we found that the image was created using Google AI. This detector identifies digital watermarks embedded directly into images generated by Google AI.
It is clear that the image does not show protests in front of Hyderabad’s Uppal Stadium against Sunrisers. The image was found to be AI generated. Therefore, NewsMeter concludes that the viral claim is false.
