Do we like Wasim Akram?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent on the record we could verify, with one clumsy slur and an unresolved gambling-promo complaint keeping him out of the top bracket.
Wasim Akram is one of Pakistan's best-known cricket names, and these days he's mostly a TV pundit. In October 2023 he was on A Sports show The Pavilion picking apart Pakistan's loss to Afghanistan at the World Cup.
That's the night he got himself in strife. CricTracker reports he used a casteist slur on air while explaining why he didn't fancy doing a live pre-match show in the heat, and the clip went viral with fans around the world criticising him. No apology from him or his channel was reported in the piece we opened.
Match-fixing whispers have trailed him since his playing days. In a 2022 interview he complained that Pakistan's social media generation calls him a match-fixer. We couldn't open the old inquiry reports, so we're not going to say more than that: it's a label he rejects, and the detail in our sources is thin.
There's also a fresh-ish complaint. In August 2025 ProPakistani reported that a citizen lodged a complaint with Pakistan's cybercrime agency alleging he promoted an online betting app banned in Pakistan. The agency reportedly confirmed receiving it, and Akram hadn't commented when the story ran. We found no outcome, so it stays an allegation.
On the harm check: we found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, and nothing on climate or conspiracy theories either. That's an absence in the sources we could read, not a clean bill. Against that sits the slur, and the fact it's one moment rather than a run of them is why this is an asterisk and not a fail.
The good stuff is where we have to be honest: the verifiable record we could open is thin. What we did see is him calling out misinformation in June 2026, when he denied a made-up quote and urged people to check before sharing. It's a small thing, but it's the right instinct.