There had always been doubts about the loyal fan base city-based franchises would be able to create in a country obsessed with the national team. Packed partisans crowds at all venues have meant those fears have been put to rest.But at the Wankhede Stadium today, as Mumbai lost a close encounter against Kings XI Punjab, the flip side of this phenomenon came to the fore. Indian stars in the visiting team, used to unstinted support across the country, had to suffer abuse from the local crowd. After suffering through the game, Yuvraj Singh and S Sreesanth were booed as they came out of the dressing room for the award ceremony. This didn’t quite go down well with Yuvraj, who spoke about the feeling of alienation at the press conference. “I don’t appreciate people talking or behaving rudely with Indian players. I didn’t like it when Sreesanth, Irfan and Piyush were not treated properly. We have played for India and have played here,” he said. Few inches short: SachinMeanwhile, two contentious run outs came under focus during the post-mortem of the one-run loss. Luke Pomersbasch being ruled not out after Shaun Pollock hit the stumps direct, and Dwayne Smith being ruled out, formed a major part of ‘what might have been’ debates. With Mumbai getting the wrong end of the stick both times, Tendulkar was asked if things didn’t go their way.“The whole world has watched what it was all about. So I would leave it at that. I will leave it to the team management to see if they want to do anything about it,” he said.But Tendulkar did add that it hurts when you lose. “Everyone has seen what happened and in whose favour the decisions eventually went. Had we got those two run out decisions our way, we would have added two more runs to the tally. If we had completed those two runs, we would have won the match,” he added.
