When calling spade a spade was a crime…..
What is common between Union Minister Shashi Tharoor, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir? Well, all the three speak their mind and have faced the wrath of many because of this.
Some may call it unnecessary and many may label the treatment as harsh, but the cruel reality has to be accepted by all and sundry. Tharoor with his tweets on his opinions about the ruling government got a lot of flak from the opposition and from his own party.
Sehwag on the other hand stated on the eve of the first Test against Bangladesh early this year that the side was quite ordinary. Was he wrong? Absolutely not, but then he erred in stating the obvious. The moment you begin to state the obvious, the moral police begin to bay for your blood, a scenario which does not show any signs of slowing down in the near future.
Now Gautam Gambhir, Delhi Daredevils skipper after his team’s convincing win over Rajasthan Royals said, “I think Rajasthan was never a threat. Except for Yusuf Pathan, the other guys were pretty ordinary. We weren’t really worried about anyone else.â€
That was enough for the IPL authorities to reprimand him of Level 1 offence which states ‘Public criticism of, or inappropriate comment in relation to an incident occurring in a Match or any Player, Team Official, Match Official or Team participating in any Match, irrespective of when such criticism or inappropriate is made.’
Well, if the performance was ‘ordinary’, one can’t expect extra-ordinary shower of praises from the opposition captain. Will he? So what’s the fuss all about? We come back again to the first point — stating the obvious. Gambhir has learnt things the hard way right from the not-so-good on the field scuffle with Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi during a ODI in India.
He followed it up with a match-ban for elbowing Australia’s Shane Watson during the 2008 Indo-Oz Test series. On more occasions than one, a small spark was enough to combust Gauti but this time around, the southpaw was spot on with his remark only to be reprimanded. With the pill of truth getting bitter with each passing match, it will be interesting to see how monotonous the post-match press conferences will become in the coming days.
One thing is for sure — the word ‘ordinary’ will never remain the same in a cricketer’s dictionary. Oh god! Did I utter the ‘unthinkable’!?
