'Shoaib Akhtar has lived off incident for 13 years': Asif reacts to 2007 T20 WC spat

A controversy had erupted during the 2007 ICC T20 World Cup when Shoaib Akhtar had hit Mohammed Asif with a bat due to which the former pacer was called back from South Africa. Akhtar talked about this incident in his autobiography, Controversially Yours, where he accused Afridi of 'aggravating the situation'.

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Mohammad Asif has now reacted to this incident with Shoaib Akhtar. He said that he called Akhtar and urged him to 'move on' as he had lived off the incident for 13 years.

“The dressing room spat with Shoaib Akhtar in 2007 was an incident that Shoaib Akhtar has lived-off for 13 years. He has made so many comments about it and has kept on bringing it up whenever he can. Well, I had enough, so I called him up recently and told him to shut up about the incident and move on from it. I told him to get over what happened, it’s history now. Instead of talking about that incident in every interview, I told him to talk sense, talk about how he can help young cricketers in Pakistan. One day he’s dreaming of being the Chief Selector, the next day he’s dreaming about being Pakistan’s Head Coach or Chairman PCB, he needs to get back to reality and actually focus on helping young cricketers instead of chatting about something that happened more than 13 years ago,” Asif told Pak Passion.

Akhtar had previously had written about this incident in his autobiography. “Afridi was aggravating the situation and I swung the bat at both of them. Afridi ducked, but Asif couldn’t get out of the way, the bat struck him on his thighs and he collapsed. I had lost it. I had never behaved like this, especially in the dressing room,” wrote Shoaib.