![Afghanistan release new promo [Source: AFP]](https://onecricketnews.akamaized.net/parth-editor/oc-dashboard/news-images-prod/1788947967234_Afghanistan.jpg?type=hq)
Afghanistan release new promo [Source: AFP]
The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) released a new promo for the upcoming Afghanistan vs India T20I series in India. Earlier this month, the board coped much criticism from Indian fans for showing a distorted Indian map in their previous promo.
While the ACB has released a new promotional video for the series, they did not exactly correct their previous mistake, but rather made another noticeable alteration to the map featured in the intro.
Afghanistan Cricket Board “hides” its mistake in updated promo
The ACB released a short promotional video for Afghanistan’s upcoming ‘home’ T20I series against India last weekend.
Although Afghanistan has a friendly geopolitical history with India, the ACB committed a massive blunder by showing a distorted map of the country.
In the graphic, the representation of India’s northern territory appeared to miss out on the Kashmir region. The visual appeared to skip the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, missing out on presenting the territory as part of the complete Indian-claimed outline.
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As one can expect, the ACB received much backlash from Indian fans, questioning the Afghanistan board for using a wrong Indian map in their official promotional video for a series set to be played in India.
On Wednesday, September 9, the ACB released yet another promo. However, this time, the board’s social media team simply placed India Gate to hide the Jammu and Kashmir region from the Indian map.
Why did ACB use India Gate in the T20I series promo
The ‘India Gate’ is located in Delhi. The ACB might have placed an image of the India Gate on the Indian map to highlight the location of the upcoming Afghanistan vs India T20I series, considering each of the three T20Is is scheduled to be hosted at the Arun Jaitley Stadium.
However, it remains unclear why the monument was positioned directly over the Jammu and Kashmir region on the map, effectively obscuring the same area that was missing from the board’s previous promotional graphic.
Why did Afghanistan’s India map blunder offend India fans?
Kashmir has long been one of the most politically sensitive and disputed regions in South Asia, making its representation on official maps a particularly contentious issue.
An area of Kashmir administered by Pakistan is not treated by India as a separate sovereign territory; instead, India maintains its claim over the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
Afghanistan cricket’s first promotional graphic for the series implied something that Indian fans can strongly object to, considering the VFX team seemingly carved out the Pakistan-administered portion from the Indian map altogether.
However, given Afghanistan’s geopolitical ties with India and a strained relationship with Pakistan, the map was more likely to have been an inadvertent error than a deliberate attempt to make a political statement.
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