Overreaction Monday ft India’s next skipper Shubman Gill, G.O.A.T KL Rahul and Sunny G's 'heated' day
Sunil Gavaskar-Anushka Sharma's fight headlines this week's Overreaction
|SportsCafe
Every week, we can’t look past the dubious and elusive statements that some of the star cricketers, commentators or celebrities make. This week is no different, given that the IPL is just getting heated, with everyone around the world surrounding it already heating up pretty much on social media.
Shubman Gill India’s future captain
After Kolkata Knight Riders’ massive victory over the Sunrisers Hyderabad, the Kolkata fans and, in general, the Indian fans became increasingly excited, hailing Shubman Gill as India’s ‘next’ captain.
SC’s Take: Well, here we are once again, looking at several future stars and already naming them future Indian skippers. Is it the first time in two weeks? Nope, last week we had several admitting that this tournament was going to be huge for India’s next prospective captain - KL freaking Rahul. In the next week, here we are looking at KKR’s Shubman Gill and calling him a future Indian captain. If there is an award for hyping their players, the English football team and the Indian cricket team must top that wretched list. Gill is excellent, Gill is one of the top talents in the country but calling him India’s future captain is dragging it a bit toooo much!
Also, the fact that he is not largely considered in the scheme of things for India’s white-ball plans perfectly sums up his position. He is no doubt extremely talented but unfortunately in a country where there are tens of thousands fighting for the same spot, you need to be incredibly consistent to prove your worth. First Gill has to prove his consistency and then we can talk about him getting the captaincy. Wait, are you the ones who count the chickens before they hatch, if you are one, I suggest you to wait and think!
IPL G.O.A.T KL Rahul
The second news/overreaction comes in just after the game between Kings XI Punjab and Royal Challengers Bangalore when KL Rahul scored the highest score for a skipper scoring 132 runs. Soon after that knock, everyone including the commentators immediately hailed him as the Greatest of All Time.
SC’s Take: Now, I’m a big fan of the Mangalore-born man KL Rahul. He’s the perfect prototype (if there was ever one) of an ideal T20 batsman, batting at any position, not just opening. He has all the necessary ingredients to light up this edition of the IPL, in order to showcase that he is one of the best T20 batsmen there is, in the entire world. Mind you, all said and done, this does not make him an IPL GOAT. If you immediately ask an ardent fan of the tournament, he would tell you straight off that Chris Gayle-David Warner combination at the top of the order is the best.
Rahul is the best batsman that even India has but he can’t and can never be considered as an IPL GOAT, at least yet. Despite winning several trophies, opening the batting, Rohit Sharma might not go down as the best IPL opener, that is the kind of legacy these two have left at the top of the order. Don’t jump into conclusions, please!
Sunil Gavaskar’s ‘fight’ with Anushka Sharma
“ knows he will improve based on the way he practices. During the lockdown, he practised only against Anushka’s bowling. We all saw the video. That wouldn’t help at all.”
SC’s Take: Now, you would imagine why did I not put the news out and instead put the statements from the former opener, Sunil Gavaskar. The answer is pretty simple, I wanted to put in its bare state to make the matter extremely simple. For a veteran commentator to take up Anushka Sharma’s name might be wrong, it is certainly wrong if he used it in the wrong context. But all that he said even if you remove the dry humour from it was that Kohli practised against Anushka’s bowling in the lockdown. Now, are you going to deny that he is wrong? No, because all of us watched that video and some of you adored it as well.
But when it came down to the bare levels of the statement, it clearly triggered the actress, who lashed (understatement) out at the former opener for bringing up her name in a negative context. Do you know where the problem started? Not between those two but the thousands of people involved in the in-betweens. During the translation, for all mischievous reasons, some publication took Sunny G's words out of context, translated it into an unsavoury statement which caught the attention of all. Like everything in India, people started overreacting and here we are, making a living out of it!
Dada-like support to Shreyas Iyer
It all started with an unharmful toss, where Shreyas Iyer mentioned that he was mentored well by Ricky Ponting and Sourav Ganguly. That kick-started a huge controversy everywhere, every single medium that’s available in India.
SC’s Take: If we ever rank countries in terms of overreacting to every single thing, we would have India at the top followed closely by England, who too in their own sense do overreact. They can never beat India because of these small statements blown out of proportion. At the toss when asked about how crucial it was to get support from the two stalwarts of cricket, Shreyas Iyer replied that he’s learnt a lot from the likes of Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Ponting. That’s exactly what created this chaos. Statements like "how could Ganguly help Iyer when he is the BCCI president, won’t it take away all kinds of integrity and trigger a ‘conflict of interest'" started popping up.
In reality, his words were just taken so much out of context in a multitude that started a controversy. That’s the IPL, in short - a tournament where every statement goes under the scanner and brings up a plethora of controversies that you didn’t even want to welcome in the first place. All that he meant was that Ganguly-Ponting had helped him in the 2019 season which is his point but for all reasons, the overblown proportion with which people started commenting just is enough for an overdose of overreaction or an overdose-of-action.
