Video shows Kuwait football celebration in 2020, not India cricket win in 2022
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 7, 2022 at 10:27
- 4 min read
- By Sumit DUBEY, AFP India
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"You will feel proud watching this video," reads a Hindi-language tweet posted on August 29, 2022.
"India's thumping victory over Pakistan was celebrated not just in India but the world over. This Dubai sheikh's celebration was amazing. The whole world is a fan of our culture and customs."
In the video, which has more than 435,000 views, a group of Arab men in a stadium leap from their seats and cheer, with one of them tearing off his keffiyeh in celebration.
The tweet was shared one day after India beat arch-rivals Pakistan in a match at the Asia Cup Twenty20 cricket tournament in the United Arab Emirates.
The video racked up thousands more views in similar Facebook posts here and here.
However, the footage is circulating in a false context.
Kuwait football match
Comments on a TikTok post that shared the video interspersed with clips from a cricket game pointed out that the footage was actually taken at a football match.
TikTok users said the footage was from a football match involving Kuwaiti club Al-Arabi, and that the TikTok post showed a doctored version of the footage edited to add clips from the India-Pakistan cricket match.
Keyword searches in Arabic found the footage of the men cheering in an Instagram post from September 22, 2020 about a football match between Al-Arabi and rival club Kuwait SC.
The post by sports journalist Khalaf El Anzi, an anchor for the ATV Kuwait channel, said he filmed the footage and that the man celebrating was the president of Al-Arabi.
"I opened my phone (to film) and at the last minute, in my camera, I spotted Aziz Ashour, the president of Al-Arabi," he wrote.
He added that Ashour "deserved to be happy" and congratulated his team, who beat Kuwait 2-1 in the Kuwait Emir Cup final on September 21, 2020.
View this post on Instagram
Cricket match clip
The footage of a cricket match that was misleadingly added to the clip from the Kuwait football game was genuinely filmed when India played Pakistan in the Asia Cup Twenty20 cricket tournament.
A person heard speaking in the background says jokingly in Hindi: "Is it really necessary to have such a climax at an India-Pakistan match?"
A keyword search of the phrase led to a longer version of the video in a TikTok post from August 29 which said it showed India playing Pakistan at the 2022 Asia Cup.
"What a match! #IndiavsPakistan #AsiaCup2022 #DubaiStadium," the caption reads.
The footage shared in the TikTok post (above) corresponds to the footage circulating in a false context on social media (below):
The TikTok user Rohit Bharati posted several videos of the tournament from the Dubai International Stadium.
The TikTok video of the India-Pakistan match corresponds to footage of the game broadcast by streaming service Hotstar (see below) and videos shared on various sports pages, including here and here.
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