Editor,
Why are we Indians so ungrateful and unforgiving when it comes to our cricket?
Our politicians keep making promises every 5 years without any accountability and keep getting elected for one term after another. Some keep ‘serving’ the people with one leg in their coffins. Then there are film stars who keep receiving love and support despite perpetual failures because of that one brilliant performance they gave a zillion years ago. That’s fine, and I’m not even asking for such a Mother Teresa level of generosity for our cricketers, but how about basic courtesy?
There is no denying the fact that it was one of the most embarrassing bowling and fielding performances that one can remember in recent times by a very talented Indian team at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday (which is expected to do wonders every single time it steps on to the field). It is perhaps not just the defeat but the manner of it that has really hurt the sentiments of Indian fans, and I completely understand that (having had a miserable day myself). However, what I can’t understand is the amount of hate that I can see brewing for some of the players all over social media.
Suddenly, they are too old to play the format, too rich (due to IPL) to try hard, too selfish playing for individual records, too timid to perform under pressure, too arrogant to select the right players and what not? Some people even went on to the extent of hinting that the match might have been thrown away on purpose. Ridiculous! Yes, just like we sing praises for our heroes when they make us proud, we have every right to criticise them when they under-perform. However, analysing what went wrong and what could have been done is one thing and launching such blatant personal attacks on our players who have given us so much joy in the past and literally bled for us on the field is disgusting. It is so ungrateful. So unfair.
It’s so easy to make judgments on hindsight. Weren’t we backing the same players to go all the way when the squad was announced a couple of months ago? Barring one or two minor disagreements, nobody seemed to have much trouble with the personnel picked to do the job. Now, all of a sudden, every single thing concerning the overall process is being put to the sword by the People’s High Court of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others.
Lately, there’s been a tendency to put the blame on the IPL for losses and young players are accused of not working hard enough after having made good money early in their careers due to the IPL. Have we forgotten the two back-to-back Test series wins in Australian soil in the last 4 years? Which team in the history of the sport has done that ever? We did it with half our players injured for more than half of the series in 2021 with more or less the same team that we are screaming at today.
The one player my heart goes out to is India’s vice-captain KL Rahul who is bearing the brunt of the wrath at the moment. I can see people calling him ‘fraud’ because he apparently doesn’t perform in ‘big matches’. So what exactly is a big match? Is every match you play for your country against any opposition not big? Was India’s first match of the campaign against Pakistan not big? Were the matches that followed not big? Would any team qualify for the knockouts if they didn’t win the league stage matches?
The GOD of cricket – Sachin Tendulkar scored 4 and 18 in the two ‘biggest’ matches of his career. If we go by the logic of KL Rahul haters, Sachin Tendulkar will have to be considered a failure despite his 100 100s isn’t it?
All said, we are horrible losers. Period. Simply awful. The way we are reacting to the defeat is more embarrassing than the defeat itself. There are times we dominate and there will be times we get dominated. If anything, we should be glad the former happens much more frequently than the latter. The opposition doesn’t turn up for a semi-final of a world championship so that Indian cricket fans can have their prize and we have to understand that. England played brilliant cricket and made us look like school boys on the field. Why can’t this also be an acceptable possibility sometimes?
New Zealand lost to Pakistan in the other semi-final in a similar manner. Do we see so much hate for their national players in their country? Let us learn some grace from them.
Yours etc.,
Fahd Alam Hazarika
Guwahati
Editorial oversight?
Editor,
I am dismayed that The Shillong Times has published an anonymous letter titled, “Hearsay is not an opinion” (Shillong Times, Nov 11, 2022) that carries slanderous statements against Albert Thyrniang. This is a miscarriage of proper editorial practice. How can an unnamed person be permitted to vilify a respectable author in the pages of a reputed newspaper?
If the letter writer had properly read Albert Thyrniang’s article, “Should not the slogan ‘In our own land we do as we wish’ be banned?, published in The Shillong Times on Nov 2, 2022, he would have observed that the author of the article had used journalistically correct words and phrases. He referred to complaints and allegations in the public domain and made by others. Albert Thyrniang has not crossed any journalistic boundary. And surely a well-established newspaper knows how to protect itself and its authors from accusations of defamation.
The writer of the letter has used objectionable terms against Albert Thyrniang such as “riff-raff”. He also makes unwarranted suggestions to him about what to do, what to preach and what to write. How is that the business of the anonymous writer? And he makes these pious and pompous statements while protectively hidden in anonymity. This is a letter of cowardice. The newspaper has made a mistake. How can an unidentified person be allowed to make slanderous statements in print? Albert Thyrniang never made a personal attack or accusation against any individual, and yet personal attacks on him are permitted by the newspaper.
Perhaps this was an editorial oversight. That’s the best benefit of the doubt that I can think of.
Yours etc.,
Glenn C. Kharkongor,
Via email
Editor replies: This newspaper believes that every person has the right to his/her views. Some are timid about revealing their names because of a backlash. Albert Thryniang can have his say in these very columns. In fact, the letters to the editor column is a Town Hall where all kinds of points and counter-points are allowed and are meant to trigger debates in a society that is otherwise silent on critical issues. When Albert Thyrniang says that job seekers have to pay a few lakh of rupees to the MPSC, in order to get a job, those that have not paid any money but got in through merit might be offended by the generalization. The editor herself has allowed scathing comments against her own articles. That, I believe is being fair. Anyone who shares an opinion is also open to criticism.