Doctored Reel Viral as Arabs Celebrating India’s Win Against Pak in Asia Cup
The original video is from September 2020, when the Al-Arabi Football Club won the finals of the Amir Cup.
The claim suggests that Arabs were celebrating in the stadium after Hardik Pandya hit the winning shot against Pakistan.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
An edited video, which shows some Arabs celebrating in a stadium, is being widely circulated on the internet with the claim that the celebration was a result of the winning shot by Hardik Pandya against the Pakistani Cricket team during the Asia Cup tournament.
However, we found that the viral clip is edited and is from September 2020. The original video shows the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Al-Arabi Sports Club, Abdulaziz Ashour, celebrating his team's victory in the Amir Cup with others.
CLAIM
The claim suggests that Arabs from Dubai were celebrating after Hardik Pandya hit the winning shot against Pakistan during their group stage match in the Asia Cup 2022. Some verified users have also shared this video which now has more than 1,82,000 views.
An archive of the post can be seen here
WHAT WE FOUND
Using InVID, a Google Chrome extension, we divided the video into several keyframes and performed a reverse image search on them. This led us to a tweet by a journalist in Kuwait, who had uploaded the same video on 22 September 2020, before the Asia Cup tournament.
The video only showed the man sitting in the audience celebrating and not Pandya's shot.
The caption, originally in Arabic, loosely translates to, "I turned on the phone at the last minute and pointed the camera at Aziz Ashour, president of the Arab Club. Tired, planted, harvested, and lacked his brothers, members of the board of directors. Congratulations to the Arab, and hard luck to Kuwait."
Taking a clue from this, we searched for the president's name and found that Abdulaziz Ashour is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Al-Arabi Sports Club.
We also found an article in Arab Times, an English daily in Kuwait, which mentioned that the Al-Arabi Football Team had won the finals in the Amir Cup held at the Jaber Al-Ahmad International Stadium on 21 September 2020.
A report in the Kuwait Times, an Arabian Gulf daily, also highlighted the victory of the football club in the tournament and had posted some pictures from the post-match ceremony, where the president could be seen.
A comparison shows that the individual in both the pictures is the same.
Evidently, an old video of people celebrating a victory during the Amir cup has been doctored and is now being shared as a recent incident.
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