There have been cricketers on both sides—India and Pakistan—who have tweeted bizarre, sometimes vile, things about their neighbours. But almost all of them have been former cricketers.
Mohammad Shami’s tweet about ‘karma’ after Pakistan’s defeat against England in the final of the T20 World Cup is different in nature though. It was unnecessary and an attempt to play by the popular ‘baap-beta’ proverb. Something the fans of both the rival teams have been playing into for long.
Shami tweeted on Sunday: Sorry brother. It’s call karma. He quote-tweeted Shoaib Akhtar who had earlier tweeted a broken heart emoji after Pakistan’s loss in the finale.
.
Now, here are the two major issues with Shami’s tweet:
1. First, he played straight into the hands of someone like Shoaib Akhtar who is known for putting out extreme sentiments. Plus, he always had an argument ready for such kind of tweets that ‘look, Pakistan played in the final while you lost by 10 wickets in the semi-final.”
He wouldn’t care if the overall trend is in India’s favour of it looked better as a team. Since there is no common enemy for India and Pakistan, people like Akhtar would like to gain oneupmanship over current tournament record.
Not only this, Akhtar never targetted any Indians in this tweet at least.
2. Shami needs to understand that him quote-tweeting Akhtar is more like venting out the frustration about something you yourself have lost. What do you want to show here? That we lost and so did you! Yes, so what? Does that make you better?
Why wouldn’t it remind anyone of Ratishankar Shukla’s dialogue in Mirzapur: ‘Hum bhi…’
You know what I mean!
This is too early in Shami’s career to look for the easy way out of an embarrassing World Cup exit. At least, not the right time to make a non-existent argument about nothing.
Hope good sense prevails and focus returns to cricket.
READ | ‘Don’t think I should be getting this,’ says Sam Curran on winning Man of the Match in T20 World Cup final
