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Abdul Razzaq
Former Pakistani cricketer Abdul Razzaq has faced widespread criticism since yesterday after a video of him making an inappropriate remark about Indian actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan emerged online.
He made the comment on a live show, where he was speaking along with three other former Pakistani cricketers, Saeed Ajmal, Shahid Afridi and Umar Gul. The four of them were discussing the reasons behind Pakistan's dismal performance in the ODI World Cup. One of the reasons which emerged was intent or the lack thereof. It was at that point that Razzaq slammed the intent of the board and caretakers by citing the example of Rai.
"Everyone over here is talking about the intention in Pakistan's cricket team. Actually, we don't have good intentions to develop and polish players in Pakistan. If you think that by marrying Aishwarya Rai, a good and pious kid would be wrong, it would never happen," Razzak said which infuriated even Pakistanis who lashed out at the 43-year-old for bringing disrepute to the nation.
Even former players joined the critics with one of them being Shoaib Akhtar who took to the micro-blogging site 'X' to criticize Razzaq. "I highly condemn the inappropriate joke/comparison made by Razzaq. No woman should be disrespected like this. People seated beside him should have raised their voice right away rather than laughing & clapping.", he wrote.
Razzaq apologizes
"I'm Abdul Razzaq. Yesterday, during the press conference, we were discussing cricket coaching and intentions. I had a slip of the tongue and mistakenly took Aishwarya Rai's name. I apologize to her personally. I did not intend to hurt anyone. I had to give some other example, but mistakenly used her name," Razzak said in a video which he released today.
Shahid Afridi also put out a clarification saying that he did not quite understand what Razzaq meant and hence, laughed. He also said that he would tell Razzaq to apologize for his comments which the latter has now done.