India may deliberately lose to oust Pakistan: Basit Ali

New Delhi, June 28 (IANS) Former Pakistan cricketer Basit Ali has claimed that India will "never want Pakistan" to make it to the semi-finals of the ongoing World Cup and that's why the Men in Blue might perform badly and intentionally lose their matches against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Pakistan journalist Saj Sadiq posted a video of Ali making these comments on a TV show on Pakistan-based channel Ary News before Sarfaraz Ahmed's men defeated New Zealand by six wickets in Birmingham on Wednesday.

"India will never want Pakistan to make it to the semi-finals. They have matches remaining against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Everyone saw the fashion in which they won against Afghanistan," said Ali, who played 19 Tests and 50 ODIs for Pakistan

"They'll play in such a way that nobody will come to know what has happened. What happened in India's match against Afghanistan? What did Australia do against India? What did David Warner do?" asked the 48-year-old as he claimed that India intentionally played poorly against Afghanistan and that David Warner deliberately underperformed against India.

Pakistan, after suffering an embarrassing 89-run loss to India, made a strong comeback in the tournament, defeating South Africa and New Zealand. They have seven points in as many games and are currently locked in a fierce four-way battle for the semi-final spot with England, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

In order to qualify for the knockout stage, the 1992 champions need to win their remaining two games against Afghanistan and Bangladesh to be played on June 29 (Saturday) and July 5 respectively.

India, on the other hand, are sitting pretty in the top four with 11 points from six games.