Gautam Gambhir was the first one to say such a bold line and ever since then it has become the talk of the town and now various experts are debating whether he is correct or not. And this is a very important topic as this concerns the fans of the Indian cricket team the most and it is a discussion that needs to be had because India has not won any ICC tournament in the last 10 years and has lost in the last 9 knockout matches which includes 4 Finals.
So, without wasting any more time let’s talk about whether India is a cricket loving country or a cricketer loving country.
India is a cricketer loving country
This is the hard truth and nobody can escape from it. In 1983 India won the Cricket World Cup when nobody gave them a chance and immediately after that India became a cricket loving country because the fans loved the team and not some players . All the players from that team were treated like legends and they were at the hearts of everyone and all the fans wanted to see each one of them succeed. Then came the era of Sachin Tendulkar and Indian cricket changed forever.
Sachin Tendulkar made his Debut in 1989 which was 6 years after India won the World Cup and by now India had become a cricket loving country. He took it to a whole another level as he became the symbol of cricket in India and he made his first test hundred in 1990 and from there it was no looking back. In the 1992 and 1996 World Cup the fans looked up to him to do the magic but they did not forget about all the others as well. In 1996, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid came into the team followed by VVS Laxman and in 2000 it was Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Gautam Gambhir etc who completed the team and the fans loved all these players equally.
Then came MS Dhoni in 2004 and he instantly found fans with his unique style and six hitting abilities and then in 2008 it was Virat Kohli who entered the team and this team won the 2011 World Cup and the whole of India partied like their family member had won the event. This is a sign of a cricket loving country but a few years later everything changed.
The IPL was introduced in 2008 and it was sure to have a lot of positive impacts on the sport and it has certainly done that and much more but the one negative impact it has had has been damaging for Indian cricket because these legendary Indian cricketers were in different IPL teams and from here started the trend towards becoming a cricketer loving country and social media did not help as well as everyone had an opinion and the fact that it has been 10 years that India has not won anything despite having the best facilities in the world has angered the fans and now the fans of Virat Kohli want Rohit Sharma to fail and not score runs and vice versa and this is a bad thing for Indian cricket. And the fans of MS Dhoni want both of them to do badly.
Recently in the IPL, Shubman Gill was abused and trolled so much by Virat Kohli fans and his sister was not left as well and similarly a lot of young Indian players have got the same treatment from the fans of these players who forget that these are fellow Indian cricketers who play for the same country as their favorite. Hopefully the trend goes back to being a cricket loving country because that will be in the best interests of everyone.
