“I keep my guard up with the ultimate protection against bacteria and viruses - @livinguard’s masks and gloves that are supercharged with L...
“I keep my guard up with the ultimate protection against bacteria and viruses - @livinguard’s masks and gloves that are supercharged with Livinguard Technology.”
A tweet from India cricket chief Sourav Ganguly’s account, evidently for a sponsor with no imagination when it comes to name or ad copy or reading the room, intruded upon a stream of desperate cries for oxygen, hospital beds, remdesivir and empathy.
It was tactless. Inopportune in its delivery and opportunistic in its message. (Ganguly probably thought so too, because he deleted it.) And given the 3.5 lakh people testing positive for the coronavirus every day in India, the uncounted thousands losing their lives to it and the millions wading through a hellscape to find help, any help just so they and loved ones can breathe and maybe live – this tweet was just plain offensive.
What it wasn’t was a surprise. This post by the public face of Indian cricket was exactly in keeping with everything Indian cricket and the IPL has stood for in recent times.
From the indifferent to the mercenary, Indian cricket has run the gamut when required to reckon with its role in society and its responsibilities to its own fans and players. And never has this...
