An old photograph of former Indian men's cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his 2007 T-20 Cricket World Cup teammates posing for a photograph with Sonia Gandhi is being shared with a false claim that it shows the former Congress president doing a photoshoot with the winning team instead of former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.
BOOM found that that the cricket team met both Gandhi and Singh on the same day and took photographs with them upon returning to the country after winning the T-20 World Cup in South Africa in 2007.
Several right-wing accounts shared the claim in response to criticism against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for congratulating the 2024 T-20 Cricket World Cup-winning team led by Rohit Sharma. They also questioned the circumstances under which Sonia Gandhi met the 2007 winning team, noting she did not hold a government position at the time.
One such verified handle on X posted the picture with a Hindi caption that translates to, "Indian cricket team won the World Cup in 2007. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the captain and Rajiv Shukla was the acting president of BCCI, instead of Manmohan Singh who was the Prime Minister of the country, the photoshoot was done with super PM Sonia Gandhi. Then no journalist raised the question that who is Sonia Gandhi who is getting a photo shoot done with the Indian cricket team. Think about how much dictatorship the vile Congress has shown in India and how much it has shamed the dignity of the post of Prime Minister)
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse search on the photograph and found it on the international stock photo website Getty Images. The photo was uploaded with a caption mentioning it was clicked on October 30, 2007, at Sonia Gandhi's residence in New Delhi.
The description with the photo reads, "Sonia Gandhi, President of All India Congress Committee (AICC) and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairperson along with Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his 20-20 Cricket World Cup teammates during a meeting at Gandhi's residence in New Delhi, 30 October 2007. The 20-20 Cricket World Cup winners."
The photograph was credited to Sipra Das on behalf of the India Today group.
We then ran a related keyword search and found several news reports from 2007 confirming that the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met the T-20 World Cup winning team to congratulate them. News agency Press Trust of India (PTI) reported on October 30, 2007, that Singh, accompanied by his wife Gursharan Kaur, felicitated the winning team and engaged in an interaction with them at their residence in New Delhi.
Photographs from the interaction on October 30, 2007, can be found on the official archive website of the Prime Minister's Office. The team also met the then-President of India, Pratibha Patil, at that time.
One such picture of Singh with the cricket team can be seen below.