Afghan Victory Video Misleadingly Claimed as India’s ICC World Cup Win

Claim

Sharing a video of Afghanistan people’s celebration was used by many users claiming that Afghanistan burst in happiness over India’s ICC world cup win. The users praised the neighbor for showering bonhomie with India.

A social media post from the account "Frontalforce" shows a crowded street celebration at night with a group of people dancing, cheering, and engaging in festivities. The caption falsely claims that Afghans were celebrating India’s victory in the Champions Trophy. The text overlay on the video reads "Afghanistan Celebrate India Victory 🥰❤️," further reinforcing the misleading narrative. The video is credited to Jitendra Pratap Singh and has gained significant attention, with over 50.2K views. The vibrant atmosphere, flashing lights, and energetic crowd create a scene that appears joyful but is inaccurately linked to India's cricket success.

Link

Fact check

Initially, the DFRAC team used the keyframes from the video to reverse search images on Google. The video had been posted on Instagram by multiple users on 27 and 28 February 2025.

Using this lead, we searched the ICC world cup schedule and realized that on 26 February 2025, Afghanistan had defeated England in the ICC knockout stage. The celebration was on Afghanistan thrashing England in the prestigious summit.

A comparison image from DFRAC shows two Instagram posts featuring the same video of a street celebration with flames visible in the crowd. The left post, shared by the user "artistecht" on February 27, claims to depict a "Crazy Celebration in Afghanistan" following Afghanistan’s win over England. It has garnered 309,090 likes and uses hashtags such as #afghanscricket and #winningmoment. The right post, shared by "the_ridz222" on February 23, features the same video with a similar caption claiming Afghanistan’s victory, but has only 21 likes. The DFRAC watermark is visible, indicating that this is part of a fact-checking analysis. The comparison highlights how the same content was repurposed to spread misleading narratives linking the footage to different events.

Going ahead, the probe confirmed that India won the final on 9 March 2025 against New Zealand.

The report on India’s win can be read here and here.

Conclusion

From the fact-check of DFRAC it became clear that the posts claiming Afghanistan celebrating India’s ICC final win is misleading. The celebration was in fact the win of Afghanistan over England in the ICC knockout stage.

Analysis: misleading