Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry and renowned journalist Saleem Safi on Saturday held talks with anchor Dr Nauman Niaz and former cricketer Shoaib Akhtar.
Last month, Nauman and Shoaib had had a heated exchange during a live telecast on PTV Sports, prompting Akhtar’s resignation from the channel.
However, after the meeting on Saturday, Nauman publicly apologised to Shoaib in a video.
“Shoaib Akhtar, I am extremely sorry for whatever happened on screen. It shouldn’t have happened, for the reason that [we] have a 30-year-long friendship and that shouldn’t go down,” Nauman said.
Akhtar, who also featured in the video, replied: “It’s fine. He (Niaz) said it, he said it. He should have said it a long time ago.”
The video ends with Niaz saying “it’s never too late” and patting Akhtar on the back.
Later, Akhtar confirmed his reconciliation with Niaz on Twitter.
“It was an unpleasant incident on national television and it had hurt my sentiments [and] that’s why it took me a while. Taking a higher moral ground, I am accepting the apology of Dr Nauman Niaz. Lets move on from this,” he tweeted, referring to his spat with Niaz.
The information minister, in a tweet, shared a selfie with both Shoaib and Nauman and said that the matter was not so big but the social media portrayed it so big. “All is well that ends well,” Fawad remarked.
