Choosing the Narendra Modi Stadium for the Final match of the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2023 has been blamed for India's shock defeat on Sunday. Many commentators, most of them with no record of playing the game, are blaming the nature of the pitch. This is a highly technical issue, though. It is for experts to decipher the pitch and if it played a role in helping Australia score runs easily even after the 15th over of their batting innings.
The second criticism pertains to the behaviour of the crowd in the stadium. As per many Netizens, the crowd went silent after it became clear that there was no way India was going to win the match. The fourth wicket partnership was not coming to an end no matter how much Rohit Sharma and the bowlers tried to end it. The crowd stopped cheering for India. "They also didn't have any sort of encouragement, even once, for the Australian batsmen in the right spirit," a Netizen cribbed.
"The appreciation of better performance by the competing teams is also part of sports culture. Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai have shown in the past that partisanship and sportsmanship can be combined," wrote Prof. Ashutosh Varshney.
A section of the intelligentsia are blaming the Ahmedabad crowd because of their dislike for the home state of Narendra Modi, BJP supporters counter. The 1996 Semi-Final match was held in Kolkata. The crowds went berserk and turned ominous after the fall of the 8th wicket during the Indian innings. The match had to be abandoned and Sri Lanka was declared the winner by the match referee. In comparison, yesterday's crowds showed their disappointment with grace.
