Chronosynclastic Infundibulum » turncoat http://www.semanticoverload.com The world through my prisms Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:36:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5 Afridi’s Turncoat Act http://www.semanticoverload.com/2011/04/04/afridis-turncoat-act/ http://www.semanticoverload.com/2011/04/04/afridis-turncoat-act/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:41:50 +0000 Semantic Overload http://www.semanticoverload.com/?p=817 When Pakistan cricket team returned home after their semi-final loss to India, the media mobbed skipper Shahid Afridi and asked him about the loss to India. In response, Afridi got pretty aggressive and asked the media (and I am paraphrasing here) “Why are you against India? Why the hatred? Our rituals are borrowed from India; our culture is in large part from there; the movies we watch in our homes are Indian. So why such animosity?”
Here is the video [the interview is in Urdu]:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv749SCqzuU

Afridi’s response made it to Facebook and other social media sites and was appreciated by many as a mature and responsible response by a de-fact ambassador of Pakistan and cricket.
The very next day, Afridi is interviewed by a reporter from Dawn news and he says this: “The media in India is very negative. One of the reasons India and Pakistan do not get along well is because of the media there. [...] I tried a lot to reach out to the Indian players, but no matter how hard we try they can never be like us.”
Here is the video [the interview is in Urdu]:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXh8Wk9LkqU

So in 24 hours, Afridi goes from chastising Pakistani media for all the hyperbole and starts blaming Indian media and the Indian team for the less than cordial atmosphere between the two nation.

Wonder what prompted the turncoat act. Any theories?

P.S: Note that Afridi avoids eye contact rather conspicuously in the second video and not the first.

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