Pakistan Cricket Board has publicly hit out at Australian news outlet Fox Cricket for running an unverified story on skipper Babar Azam involving allegations of sexting.

On Tuesday, Fox Cricket published a piece headlined ‘Cricket superstar caught up in bizarre allegations he was sexting teammate’s girlfriend’. The information seems to have been based on tweets from a Twitter account @niiravmodi, attributed by many, including Fox Cricket, to be the source of a rumour doing the rounds since Monday on social media. The bio of the account calls itself a “parody”, while being verified with a blue tick via the Twitter Blue subscription service.

The tweet was picked and carried by several other news publications in India and Pakistan.

As our media partner, you might have considered ignoring such unsubstantiated personal allegations which Babar Azam has not deemed worthy of a response. https://t.co/QZFAxbd4QR

— Pakistan Cricket (@TheRealPCB) January 17, 2023

PCB’s response read: “As our media partner, you might have considered ignoring such unsubstantiated personal allegations which Babar Azam has not deemed worthy of a response.”

Fox Cricket has since updated its piece to mention the account to be a parody, with the introduction now saying that Babar Azam was “falsely accused of sexting a teammate’s girlfriend after videos and voice recordings went viral online”.

Meanwhile, @niiravmodi continues to tweet on the topic, including replying to Fox Cricket’s story with “Delete this tweet, “bf in team for sexting” story is false, I did this in a satirical way.”

PCB’s tweet is the first instance of any response from Pakistan Cricket on the entire episode, with Babar himself staying clear of any comment. On Twitter, fans lent support for Babar with the hashtag “WeStandWithBabarAzam” trending. Others noted that teammate Imam-ul-Haq had changed his Twitter profile picture to that of Babar.