The former skipper of Pakistan, Inzamam-ul-Haq finally responded to the claims made by the ex-speedster Shoaib Akhtar and former leg-spinner Danish Kaneria about the mistreatment of the minority cricketers in the national team. Lately, a video of the ‘Rawalpindi Express’ has gone viral where he revealed the fellow leg-spinner Kaneria being mistreated for being Hindu.
And hours later, Kaneria thanked the ace pacer of Pakistan and his fellow cricketers who had always been supportive to him. The leg-spinner also said that if Akhtar would take the names of the players who refrained him from even having food with them. He said that he didn’t have the courage to take the names of those cricketers, but if Akhtar supported, then others would see and understand.
However, the former skipper of Pakistan, Inzamam-ul-Haq has denied any such thing happened in the team while he narrated few incidents to prove the “religious peace and harmony” that existed in the team.
Inzamam: ‘I am not ready to accept that we have such small hearts’
The bowler Kaneria has spent most of his career under the leadership of Inzamam who has been one of the highest run-getters in Pakistan cricket. The ex-batsman straightaway denied accepting that the cricketers in his team would ever mistreat any other fellow cricketer based on their religion.
“I have been hearing about this controversy with Danish, that when he played then some boys didn’t think well about him or didn’t want to eat with him or go out with him”
“The captain who Danish played the most under is me, and I never felt this thing, that there is any such thing in our team, that any player treats another player badly if he is a non-Muslim. I never noted even a single example of any such thing in our team”
He gave the example of the cricketer Mohammad Yousuf, who was formerly known as Yousuf Youhana. The only Christian cricketer in the team converted his faith to Muslim who was never treated any differently than the other cricketers.
“The example I can give is: Like there was Yousuf in the team and he was a non-Muslim but by the grace of Allah, he became a Muslim and became Mohammad Yousuf. He never felt anything before when he was Yousuf Youhana or after conversion. If he felt any such thing before, I don’t think he would have converted.”
Inzamam said that he is not ready to accept that Pakistan cricketers would have “such small hearts” to mistreat their fellow cricketers while they openly welcomed Indian cricketers when they visited Pakistan in 2004.
“I am not ready to accept that we have such small hearts that we did a thing like this, that we didn’t accept someone. I think Pakistanis have big hearts and we can accept everyone in our hearts”
“In 2004, India came to Pakistan after 15 years and Pakistanis welcomed them with open arms. Wherever they went to eat, shopping, go in a taxi, nobody took money from them.”
In the meantime, Kaneria has taken the name of his ex-leader Inzamam in the list of the names who supported him throughout his career span.