Fact Check: Viral Video of Australian Fan Chanting “Vande Mataram” Not from World Cup 2023

New Delhi (Vishvas News): On October 20, 2023, Australia secured a victory against Pakistan in the World Cup 2023. Subsequently, a video has been circulating on social media, showing a man wearing an Australian cricket team jersey enthusiastically chanting slogans of “Vande Mataram” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. The claim says that this is how Australian fans celebrated their team’s victory against Pakistan.

Vishvas News investigated and found the claim to be misleading. The viral video is dated back to January 2021 when India beat Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

(इस फैक्ट चेक को हिंदी में पढ़ने के लिए यहां क्लिक करें।)

What is in the viral post:

The viral video was shared by an Instagram user, followblueshome11, on October 21 with the caption “Australia after beating Pakistan”.

An archived version of this post can be found here.

Investigation:

To investigate the viral claim, Vishvas News conducted a reverse image search of keyframes of the viral video. This led us to screenshots of the same video used as a feature image in news articles published on January 20, 2021, on websites such as Times Now and DNA India. These reports confirmed that the video captured the moment when an Australian fan raised the “Vande Mataram” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai” slogans following India’s victory over Australia in the Gabba Test during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2021.

Additionally, we found the same video on YouTube, uploaded on January 19, 2021, by a user named @memeszar5096 with a description that confirmed that it was indeed from the celebration of India’s Gabba Test victory over Australia.

After establishing that the video is from 2021, we checked to find out if a similar incident occurred during the recent Australia-Pakistan match in the World Cup 2023. A keyword search led us to a news article published by NDTV on October 21, 2023. This article had a tweet embedded within it, showcasing an Australian fan chanting “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. However, it was evident that this video was different from the viral one.  According to the report, “In the World Cup 2023, on Friday, Australia defeated Pakistan by 62 runs at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, giving a strong attack to the neighbour’s claim to the semi-finals. However, many scenes were the centre of attraction during the match, but one became very very special. And that was an Australian fan loudly shouting slogans of Bharat Mata Ki Jai. During the match, as soon as this Australian fan started loudly shouting slogans of Bharat Mata Ki Jai in the audience, the Indian fans sitting nearby also got filled with enthusiasm and they also joined in with this fan.”

Vishvas News does not independently verify the time and location of the video, but it is clear that the video has been available on the internet since January 2021.

To confirm our findings, we reached out to Cricket expert and ESPN commentator Syed Hasan, who confirmed that the viral video is indeed from 2021.

Lastly, Vishvas News conducted a social scan of the Instagram user followblueshome11, who posted the misleading content. We found that the user is followed by more than 4,000 people.