The modern era belongs to social media. You can not ignore its presence, you can not run from it and you can definitely not save yourself from it if you mess things up even once. Social media trolls are always ready to dig up your mistakes from the past to gain publicity, shattering your image in the process without the slightest of regret.
This phenomenon is unfortunately relevant in the sports world as well – in fact, it is more common here. We often see decade old tweets of famous sportsmen going viral and they are often subject to criticism in case the tweets are found to be offensive or provocative in any manner.
The same thing happened in the case of England cricketer Ollie Robinson just a few months ago. 10 year old tweets of the English pacer in which he was passing racial remarks publicly went viral in 2021 right after he made a sensational debut against New Zealand and as a result he was suspended for a good number of days. Fortunately after a huge backlash from the fans, his punishment period was reduced.
A similar thing has occurred with retired cricketer Shoaib Akhtar now. However, in his case it is rather funny.
Back in 2014, Shoaib Akhtar had posted a picture of Bangladesh player Shakib Al Hasan holding the groin area of a fellow teammate, on facebook with the caption “Ball Tampering”.
The post has gone viral now after almost 8 years after the incident.