Cricket Australia apologises for racist term shown for Pakistan on score graphic

Pakistan have begun their preparations for the three-match Test series vs Australia as they locked horns with Prime Minister’s XI on Wednesday, December 06 at Manuka Oval, Canberra. Their newly appointed captain Shan Masood had a great outing on Day 1 of the warm-up fixture as he scored a brilliant hundred.

However, it wasn’t Masood’s hundred that grabbed the headlines but Pakistan’s short form on the scores graphic during the live broadcast of the game. Notably, the graphic had mentioned Pakistan’s short form as ‘PAKI’ instead of the usual PAK.

The screenshots of the live broadcast of the game went viral all over social media with fans calling out Cricket Australia (CA) for using a slur for Pakistan. The word P*** is a slur used for people of not only Pakistani origin but from the entire Indian subcontinent. It is considered derogatory in many parts of the world and the Oxford Dictionary classifies the word as ‘offensive’.

The issue was brought to light by the Australian journalist Daany Saeed who had posted a screenshot of the live broadcast on his X account and captioned it “The choice to run with “PAKI” on the Fox ticker over the traditional “PAK” is…quite a choice.”

As soon as the issue got the attention of CA, they rectified the error on the broadcast and changed Pakistan’s short form to ‘PAK’ and also issued a statement saying that the graphic was generated from an automatic feed.

“The graphic was an automatic feed from a data provider which had not been used previously for a Pakistan game. This was obviously regrettable, and the error we corrected manually as soon as it came to light,” said CA in a statement.

Shan Masood unbeaten on 156 after Day 1

Coming back to the match, Pakistan finished Day 1 on 324/6 after 89.4 overs with Captain Shan Masood unbeaten on 156* (235) while Babar Azam (40 off 80) and Sarfaraz Ahmed (41 off 47) also made valuable contributions.