Open letter to fans of the Indian Cricket Team

Cricket is more than a game in India

To the ever-expanding fan base of our Cricket Team.

Greetings,

Your strength is unprecedented, such that where ever in the world our team goes to play, you make them feel at home, your ever increasing number could fill up countries, your people lie in every nook and cranny of the world. You were, you are and you will always remain paramount, yet sometimes your power gets channeled in the wrong direction. So what do we do?

As Kapil Dev lifted the magnificent World Cup trophy back in 1983 at the home of cricket - Lord's cricket ground, India sounded a bugle to the World of cricket and to the international community at large that it was not to be taken lightly. It also meant that India could not only compete with the greats but also challenge the greatest of teams. With India causing a series of upsets quite frequently by beating the top teams of international cricket, the 'upset' tag was soon removed from India's victories and it fast became one of the premier teams of International cricket.

However the rapid rise of the Indian cricket team caused the expectations to skyrocket to a point where now they are more than any possible majestic shit where the teams loss causes an uproar on social media with disgraceful comments. Rewind to the World T20 final where India lost to Sri Lanka and fans pelted stones at Yuvraj Singhs residence.

It’s hard to understand how people fail to realise the burden of expectations on a man's shoulders when he walks out to bat for the country with 1.25 billion eyes on him hoping he would score. When he doesn’t, the same people go home to their laptops and get busy mocking the performance of the players who until yesterday were their idols!

Sometimes individuals are blamed and targeted for the whole team's loss. We saw that as the aftermath of India's loss against Australia in the semi-final of the recently concluded World Cup. Twitter was abuzz with jokes and memes on Anushka Sharma whom people held responsible for distracting Mr Kohli.

At this point, I am compelled to share a personal experience with you which would make clear, the stupidity of people's comments at the time. A day after the match which had sent the entire nation into a tizzy, I went to the park but found it empty perhaps because of the disappointing loss, people wanted to stay away from cricket, I guess.

However on the badminton courts too, the discussions weren't far away. I was eavesdropping on 2 gentlemen whom I will fondly remember as Santa and Banta (Their ridiculous remarks compels me to call them these names). Santa was of the view that Kohli was trying to impress Anushka and thus played a rash shot while Banta simply called Anushka Sharma, a 'panauti' (Bad luck) for the Indian team.

The two went on length and criticised Dhoni too while desperately trying to add some logic to their arguments. It seems that today, every cricket fanatic in this country thinks that he can become the next Ayaz Menon or Harsha Bhogle without any working knowledge of what happens on the cricket field.

This was the situation on social media, but the Indian news channels were nor far away resorting to sensationalism. Particularly the news channel 'Times Now' and its editor-in-cheif - Arnab Goswami.

Mr Goswami, my utter respect for your craft fell down like a house of cards on the day when your channel sparked a national debate - "Shame in Sydney ". His exact words being "Can we afford to be in denial about the disaster that took place in Sydney."

On his panel were some people who had no sort of cricket acumen or knowledge and were presenting all sorts of ridiculous arguments all the while forgetting India's wonderful performance in the World Cup until then not losing a single match in the group stage.

Thank you, Mr Goswami, for presenting the finest example of yellow journalism. Fortunately, he got a taste of his own medicine when "Shame on Times Now" started trending on twitter. But frankly speaking of course (Pun intended), I don't think he's ready to accept his mistake.

However, the most shameful act came after International tennis sensation Maria Sharapova said that she didn't know who Sachin Tendulkar was. It was during the Wimbledon when the dapper looking Sachin Tendulkar was present in the stands, enjoying his retirement I guess. In the post-match press conference, Sharapova was asked how did she feel to see Sachin Tendulkar in the stands. She replied truthfully and the rest is history. "Who is Sharapova?" started trending on twitter with the Indian twitterati feeling that they must protect their "God of cricket".

I am a Sachin Tendulkar fan but even I am sensible enough to know that there is no reason why Sharapova should be knowing about Sachin Tendulkar. The reason being quite simple - Sharapova hails from Russia and currently resides in the U.S.A. Both countries have no cricketing culture whatsoever hence Sharapova not knowing about Tendulkar is actually quite natural and expected provided people make some use of those little grey cells.

Ask any Indian about the best baseball players in the world and they’ll make you feel like they are being crucified! So better back off buddy... because all you’ll get as an answer would be a blank expression! Some odd and special seeds may be knowing, but we are talking about the majority here! Some will even ask what is baseball.

Bottomline being that when the India twitterati pulls such stunts, it kind of defames the country! We are ready to insult an international tennis sensation when she admits that she doesn't know about our ‘God of cricket’ and yet, back home we throw stones at our players when they fail to deliver.

That's like the highest standard of hypocrisy being exemplified by the cricket fans in our country. I agree that no one can stop the flooding of jokes and memes on twitter and why should they ? To be honest they are hilarious. Its just that a few bad seeds go the extra mile pounding personal comments on our cricketers. That's not done ! I would like to appeal to all of you that if you are an earnest fan of our cricket team, then stand by them no matter what, in good and bad times and I'm sure they'll deliver!

Yours truly

Fan of the Indian team

For Life!