The bitter saga of Arshdeep's trolling and the fallout

What it means for India when trolls call Arshdeep a Khalistani... Brut journalist Labanya Maitra explains.

Transcript

00:00Cricket, the game that is arguably India's biggest social unifier, came under attack

00:07yet again.

00:08While cricket players are revered as demigods when they win matches, the internet was quick

00:13to flip the script when India lost a match against Pakistan in the 2022 Asia Cup.

00:19People trolled the 23-year-old Arshdeep Singh, who missed a dolly of a catch in the nail-biting

00:24clash.

00:25But what's really sick is the fact that trolls went as far as linking the player to

00:29the Khalistan movement.

00:31But this wasn't the first time a player was subjected to communal and anti-minority

00:35slurs after losing a match.

00:37Mohammad Shami too was called a traitor and a Pakistani after India lost the World Cup

00:43to its neighbour in 2021.

00:45Former cricketer Irfan Pathan was subjected to communal remarks for speaking about racism,

00:50peace and unity, and the Udaipur murder following Nipush Sharma's comments about Prophet Muhammad.

00:56Wasim Jaffer was accused of selecting players on the basis of religion for the Uttarakhand

01:01team, which he started coaching in 2020.

01:04While trolling may not be new for Indian cricket, this was starkly different from what players

01:09like Dhoni, Tendulkar and Kohli went through.

01:12When they failed, no one dragged their religion or caste into the post-match equation at all.

01:19As for Arshdeep, many of the derogatory tweets came from fake accounts in Pakistan, but many

01:24of them were from India as well.

01:26Even his Wikipedia page was edited to present him as a Sikh man with Khalistani links.

01:35They used to say, nothing unites India quite like Bollywood and cricket.

01:39While Bollywood actors are facing perception problems of their own, there seems to be a

01:44sinister effort afoot to sully the dignity of our cricketers too.

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