In defence of Rajkot’s cricket enthusiasts

This is in response to the spate of articles on crowd trouble during the recently concluded one-day series. The latest was the piece, ‘...

This is in response to the spate of articles on crowd trouble during the recently concluded one-day series. The latest was the piece, ‘The dangerous new face of the unruly Indian cricket spectator’ (IE, November 26) wherein it was stated, ‘But the cake goes to the third game at Rajkot when crowd trouble erupted…’

Rajkot, having hosted the recent abandoned WI-India One Day International, has had to suffer the ignominy of being branded as a venue of ‘unruly crowd behaviour’. It is very disheartening that the media has clubbed the Rajkot incident with whatever occurred in Jamshedpur and Nagpur.

Unfortunately, no information/photograph/video clipping lends credence to such unruly crowd behaviour in Rajkot, unlike at the other venues which reported such problems. TV expert Maninder Singh ranted about despicable ‘crowd behaviour’ without actually knowing what it was.

To anyone who watched the match on TV, the ground was clean — not even a piece of paper could be spotted, even after the ‘irresponsible crowd behaviour’. The hurling of one empty water bottle, by a deranged character, that did occur is definitely a very innocuous reason to abandon the match. It seemed as if such a decision was based on the whims of Mike Proctor, probably influenced by the actual bad behaviour of the crowd in Nagpur and Jamshedpur. It will, indeed, be a great injustice if Rajkot is deprived of international matches based on a very, very minor incident.