The social media attack on Shami and ‘New India’ Last Sunday, the Indian men’s cricket team lost to Pakistan for the first time ever in a ...
The social media attack on Shami and ‘New India’
Last Sunday, the Indian men’s cricket team lost to Pakistan for the first time ever in a Word Cup. Given the near-crazy amount of passion the sport invokes in the subcontinent, it was expected that Indian fans would be disappointed. What was not, though, was for Mohammed Shami, one of India’s finest seam bowlers, ever to be targeted for his religion. Trolls launched a horrific, ugly and coordinated attack on Shami who had had a bad outing.
But as veteran sports writer Sharda Ugra pointed out in a sharp piece in Mojo, the most jarring part of the episode was the long silence of his colleagues in the Indian team. Captain Virat Kohli finally issued a statement on Saturday afternoon – but by then the damage had probably been done. As Ugra writes, “The most vile language was used on your Muslim teammate and silence on the subject is not sanguine. All the Indian team needed to say that no matter where it comes from, online abuse, hatred and bigotry of their own in this case was, is and will always be unacceptable.”
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