Former Indian cricketer Venkatesh who created a storm on X platform by posting a cryptic tweet critical of the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) on Saturday, September 9, referring to “One corrupt guy” and deleting it later, turned his ire on journalist and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair for sharing a screenshot of the deleted post.
“Haha.. Says a serial hate-monger, who has put so many lives in danger for his agenda. You disguising as a fact-checker is like Terrorists talking about peace,” he tweeted berating Zubair. Prasad also said, “Am aware of him putting lives at risk and posting derogatory stuff about Hindu Gods. A real shame that such deceivers still can disguise as journalists and beg for donations.” The derogatory tweet led to more users questioning Prasad over the deleted post, asking him to divulge who the corrupt person he referring to was.
“It takes one corrupt, arrogant guy to take away the hard work of an organisation that is generally non-corrupt and get a stamp of corruption on the whole leadership, not just on a micro level but at a large level,” read Prasad's deleted tweet. This tweet along with two other comments from the cricketer made X users speculate if he was referring to the BCCI, of which Jay Shah, son of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, is secretary.
On Sunday, Prasad, a former medium pace bowler and coach, however re-posted the deleted tweet after making some edits.
After several X users asked him to clarify whether he was speaking about the BCCI, Prasad said it was a general tweet. “Since I was also speaking about the inefficiency of the BCCI around tickets in other tweets, it led to confusion and looked out of context. Hence deleted,” he said.
“This doesn’t look good. Either the ticket partners are incompetent to handle the ticket and traffic or this is another eyewash in the name of releasing tickets. Hope there is a proper audit and identification of how the tickets are sold and to whom and what platform. Just cannot take the biggest stakeholders, the fans for a ride with false assurances,” Prasad had tweeted on Friday, criticising the way in which ticketing was done for ICC men’s cricket match. This raised eyebrows as Jay Shah heads the Finance and Commercial Affairs (F&CA) committee of the ICC, where he sits on the board.
In his other tweets, Venkatesh also spoke about the problems around the upcoming ODI World Cup, including the delay in the schedule for the matches. “There is no debate and doubt on the fact that we have messed up the lead up to the World Cup. Unreasonable delay in schedule in the first place and if that wasn’t enough changing the schedule hampering 5 matches in the process, if that wasn’t enough a completely non-transparent and inefficient ticket system only encouraging black marketeers. It is a proud moment to be hosting a World Cup and it should have been a great time for the fans but these difficulties for the fans doesn’t look unplanned . It’s time we wake up and not make this incompetence a norm just because “Yes Men” around don’t want to speak up. It is a matter of national prestige,” he wrote.