Claim: An image shows the Pakistani cricket team breaking their fast with the iftar laid out on a carpet amid the open cricket ground, during the third T20I match in Auckland.
Fact: The picture is not authentic. While the team did break their fast during the third T20I match against New Zealand, the players did not observe Iftar sitting together on a carpet with plates of food as depicted in the image.
The Pakistan cricket team started its tour of New Zealand on 16 March 2025 and will complete it on 5 April. The tour consists of five T20I and three ODI matches. So far, New Zealand has led the series 4-1 in the T20I format, and the ODI matches will begin on 29 March.
On 21 March, Pakistan won the third T20I match in the series held in Auckland, despite losing the first two. In the third match, batter Hasan Nawaz broke the record for the fastest century in a T20I match by a Pakistani player, reaching 100 runs in just 44 balls.
On the same day, a Facebook page published a photo alleging that it shows the Pakistani cricket team breaking their Ramazan fast during their match against New Zealand. The caption accompanying the image said:
“The match has been stopped as Pakistan players break their fast. What a moment in Auckland.
#PakistanTelegraph”
Fact or Fiction?
Conducting a Google search for “Pakistan cricket team break fast third T20” showed local news channels’ coverage of the team breaking their fast in the third T20I against New Zealand on 21 March 2025. The team’s iftar was covered by BOL News, Geo News, HUM News, and Express News. The match was “temporarily halted” by the umpires “during the fifth over of New Zealand’s innings” for the team to break their fast. As can be seen in the coverage, the food was not laid out on a carpet in the field. Below are a few pictures showing the actual, authentic scenes from the Iftar:
Source: The Express Tribune
Source: The Express Tribune
Running a reverse-image search for the image in the claim showed that it appeared on Instagram and Threads on 21 March 2025, the day Pakistan won the third match of the series—their first win of their tour. The Instagram post is by the same page that posted the claim on Facebook: Pakistan Telegraph. The image also appeared with an embedded Urdu caption on the same date, claiming it showed the Pakistani cricket team breaking their fast during the match in Auckland.
Seeing that the image had not appeared on the internet in the past or in any other context, Soch Fact Check suspected that it may be doctored. We then fed the image to AI detectors to see if it was fake. Fake Image Detector was used because it combines both Metadata analysis and Error Level Analysis (ELA). Moreover, sightengine ranked number one in an independent benchmark test on AI-media detection conducted in 2024. Fake Image Detector said that the picture was a “Computer Generated or Modified image”. Similarly, sightengine gave a 99% rating of the picture being “Likely AI-generated”.
Source: Fake Image Detector
Source: sightengine
Soch Fact Check therefore concludes that the Pakistan cricket team did break their fast during the third T20I match against New Zealand on 21 March 2025, while the match was temporarily halted. However, the picture in the claim is fake and portrays the scenario inaccurately.
Virality
On Instagram, the photo was found here, here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the photo was found here, here, here, and here.
On Threads, the photo was found here.
Conclusion: While the Pakistan cricket team did break their Ramazan fast during the third T20I match against New Zealand on 21 March 2025, the photo in the claim is not authentic and represents the scene inaccurately. Credible news coverage of the event shows that no carpet decked with food and drinks was laid out on the field.
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Background image in cover photo: ESPNcricinfo
