Aakash Chopra shared that he was once trolled by former England all-rounder Moeen Ali. Chopra recalled that during England’s 2016 tour of India, he was working as a cricket analyst and pointed out a flaw in Moeen’s batting. The criticism didn’t sit well with Moeen, who later responded by scoring a century in the fifth and final Test of the series. Moeen then took to social media, sharing Chopra’s stats to mock the former India cricketer.

“A fellow cricketer trolled me over this. When fans do it, you eventually get used to it. This happened while I was working for Cricinfo. During my analysis, I pointed out Moeen Ali’s issues with the short ball. I suggested that the short ball could be effective against him since he didn’t have a strong defensive game for it, and you could set a trap by placing two fielders back. We even created a demo to show why he struggles with the short ball. It was during the Chennai Test, and he ended up scoring a century in that game,” Chopra said on Shubhankar Mishra’s YouTube channel.

“He posted a tweet that evening sharing my stats, clearly upset. Since he was a fellow cricketer, I responded, saying, ‘At least you don’t have an issue with my analysis. I agree, you might take issue with my stats, but you didn’t criticize the analysis itself, which is my job now,” he added.

He added that Moeen later reached out to apologize.

“Interestingly, the following morning, Ishant Sharma was bowling and India had three fielders in the deep. Bouncers were bowled from the very start. Moeen hit a four but was dismissed after a while. I felt vindicated, but I didn’t go to Moeen and say, ‘I told you so.’ Later, he apologized and admitted, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted that way. What I said was wrong,’” the former India batter explained.