Pakistan and Afghanistan's cricket match brought out the xenophobe in Shoaib Akhtar

Was yesterday's ICC World Cup match a nail-biter or what?

Pakistan won a nervous and thrilling contest with neighbour Afghanistan at Headingley yesterday to lift them to fourth place in the World Cup table; Afghanistan did not go down without a fight and deserve mad respect for that game.

While sport has a uniquely unifying power, it can sometimes also bring out the ugly side in some as things get intense during a game.

This match in particular seems to have exposed the xenophobe in a lot of Pakistanis on social media (PakistanVSNamakHaraams was trending on Twitter so you can imagine...), and that includes former cricketer turned commentator, Shoaib Akhtar.

Right before the match, Akhtar released a short video in which he says that if the ID cards of the Afghan team were checked, we'd discover that most of them are from Peshawar or Karachi and that they could be banned for this.

"We love the people of Afghanistan, we love peace and wanted to help you out. We gave refuge to three million Afghans, we still love you and we're still owning you. But tomorrow there will be no love when Pakistan will take on you guys."

He also said that while India has invested a lot into making Afghanistan a good team, it weren't able to instil maturity in it.

Thankfully, Twitter called him out on his distasteful comments:

There's no place for this kind of discrimination here, nuh uh

This is an excellent question. WHY?

Don't watch it, don't wan't it.

Sometimes ignoring is self-care

Perhaps something to consider?

Here's hoping

It's ironic because back in January, Shoaib had called out Sarfaraz Ahmed for his racist remarks against South Africa’s Andile Phehlukwayoin in a short clip. He later deleted that video.