TV channels milk the Sehwag-Latif war of words  

Virender Sehwag’s senseless comments were just the opium some noisy national (read as ‘nationalist’) television channels were waiting to get high on and start a meaningless debate ostensibly on cricket—but which was anything but that.

Many Indian cricket fans would have been heartbroken with the batting legend’s loose talk that not just hurt his image, but unnecessarily dragged the country’s image down.

After Sehwag’s loose talk, Pakistan’s Rashid Latif reacted and crossed all levels of nonsense. But, while Sehwag this time chose to stay away from the muck-raking and juvenile contest with Pakistan’s not-so-well-known former wicket-keeper, this was the hot topic that a few Indian TV channels found difficult to resist.

Still, it would have been alright if the debate was on cricket or on the right or wrong of these two former cricketers. But, the debate was anything but that. It took off on a tangent and made it an India versus Pakistan political debate.

The taglines, on one particular channel, said it all:

“For Pak Cricket is now communalism”

“Cricket now war for Pak”

“Defeat making Pak to sink to new lows?”

“Pak’s mindset exposed”

“Pak cricket icons in a shock tirade”

Interestingly, at the very beginning of the show, the anchor made it clear: “Rashid Latif is ignored everywhere, including his own nation, Pakistan.” So, logically, his diatribes should have been ignored too; but that was not to be! In fact, his remarks seemed to be the perfect launching pad for the channel to meander into its ‘nationalist’ agenda in the 37-minute debate.

One of the experts wanted to know “what Latif was smoking” before posting such a video, which he labelled as “a rant of a lunatic.” The only expert, who had a cricket background and spoke about the game briefly, conceded that he “doesn’t agree with what Viru said” and that “he could have been more mature about his comments.”

And, soon enough, the show shifted to the ‘India versus Pakistan’ political agenda, and before you could even blink, words of communal hatred rang loud. It wasn’t any more about what Sehwag said or how Latif reacted, but soon turned into an absurd ‘historical’ debate on who built India’s monuments.

Latif had apparently said that historical monuments like Taj Mahal and Ajmer Sharif “were left by his ancestors.”

Yes, on a platform where cricket was to be discussed, such meaningless debate was taking place.

The anchor though did not find a “communal or a religious angle in Sehwag’s tweets” which revolved around calling Pakistan “India’s son”. She, however, stayed very supportive of all the anti-Pakistan and other communal comments by those “in favour of India”.

For reasons unknown, she also refrained from conveying to the audience what cricketing sense could be derived from the iconic retired batsman’s comments. She, nevertheless, didn’t let go of a single opportunity to add fuel to the fire.

For instance, through ‘extensive research’, she managed to find what Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Malik had said after losing to India in 2011 and 2007 respectively. Which, undoubtedly, were statements made against India. However, she missed out on, or maybe ignored, what Afridi tweeted after India’s clinical victory on June 4.

Afridi tweets:

A former Indian army General, who stayed surprisingly silent for the initial part of the debate, also joined in and then ‘the nation’ was told about how Bangladesh was formed and how the “problems for Pakistan started”.

The senseless rant continued and touched more similar topics such as in which country, out of the two, more Muslims lived or where people are treated better or which country had developed more over the past 70 years and so forth.

From communalism to religious extremism to forced nationalism, the debate had, sadly, everything but cricket as the topic.