Cricket involves passion and it is understandable, but trolling a teammate for his religion is pathetic
After dominating Pakistan in World Cups, the Indian team lost this time to the archrival. And it would not be wrong to say that the game of cricket lost, too. The acrimony between the countries became more pronounced as India lost flat and square. It is hard to assess how many Television sets were broken on that fateful day but one thing is sure that we are pathetic losers. We just cannot accept defeat and no matter how civilised we call ourselves, at the end of the day, we are a bunch of kids crying after a lost game. That is what has happened after the Indo-Pak match. The people had anger. It is understandable when you are too passionately involved with the game, or for that matter, anything. What is not acceptable; however, is to rake in the religion and troll a teammate over it, Mohammed Shami in this case. The social media was deluged with the trolls, calling names, questioning his loyalties, intentions and whatnot. Mohammed Shami was of course not the sole reason why India lost and even if he was, nobody has any business to troll and call names just because the person happens to be a Muslim.
This is not spontaneous; this has been systematically implanted in the minds of the people. The youth is even more vulnerable and prone to such anti-Muslim propaganda that is going on unabated for quite some time now. The Whatsapp groups, the Facebook posts and many such platforms have a plethora of content denouncing Muslims; their character assignation happens on a daily basis. Mercifully, there are still some sane voices and that is the saving grace. Shami’s defence came from none other than the captain of the Indian team, Virat Kohli, who came out in the open to defend his teammate and went on to say that the guys trolling him were pathetic. Even Sunil Gavaskar called such people faceless and not to be taken into account. Let’s be rational. Cricket is just a game, not a war. One can lose, one can win and that is what the game is all about. It should be an occasion to bring people closer so that the understanding between the two countries increases. Indeed there are such people across the borders, too, who want to live in hate and would choose acrimony over bonhomie.
