Cricket, the most popular game in India is once again showing us the extent to which it can affect our feelings.
Lets talk about yesterday’s match: India vs New Zealand, one of two semi-finals of the Cricket World Cup 2019. I noticed one thing which I think is a serious matter to think on.
An overwhelming exasperation. This is the first thing which hurt me. Why are we getting so angry just because we lost a game? Its not like our team is incongruent. We have seen what our team is capable of in every match of this World Cup. Every Indian was praising the Cricket Team for its exceptional performance in all their previous matches. We were so proud that we are Indian. And now suddenly just because we lost a game against New Zealand, we say, “Who the hell selects these players? They are so dumb!”
Most of us are busy with our opinions, this player should be dropped, that player should be dropped, blah blah blah. I think we should stop saying nonsense and show some respect to what our players did on the field. We should know that we are no one to disrespect any player of our team. Everyone can talk and say whatever they want, but they don’t know what was going on on the pitch. The least we can do is to not disrespect them.
Let me tell you what happened when India lost the semi-final against Australia in the Cricket World Cup 2015.
Most Indians started blaming one player – Virat Kohli – who later turned out to be one of the most successful captains India’s ever had. Moreover, they didn’t even feel ashamed of blaming his girlfriend at the time Anushka Sharma for the same! I wasn’t able to understand how the lady was even related to India’s loss in cricket. She was just part of the audience like the rest of us.
Apart from this, we have no right to publicly blame any citizen for what they have or haven’t done. Today, our love for our cricketers seems to be conditional. I don’t think we deserve to support them when they play well if we don’t support them during their bad days.
And this wasn’t the first time we Indians did such a thing. We have been witnessing this kind of behaviour for a long time.
So, I would like to request every Indian cricket fan to just take a game as a game and not allow it to get you too emotional.