This has been an exhilarating year for Indian sports. Be it the Rio Olympics or an Indian club (Bengaluru FC) playing in AFC cup final, India have truly made a benchmark for themselves in the world of sports.
With the year coming to an end we take a look at the top sports-based tweets which made headlines in 2016.
Virat Kohli's tweet supporting actress Anushka Sharma is the golden tweet of 2016.Virat tweeted encouraging his fans and critics, who attributed his outstanding performance in the ICC World T20 to their break-up, to focus on empathy and community building.
Kohli’s tweet got retweeted more than 40,000 times and got more than 1.07 lakh likes.
The tweet which came second in the list, was when columnist and author Shobhaa De slammed the Indian athletes’ performance in Rio 2016, as they were failing to win any medal until Sakshi Malik broke the deadlock with her bronze.
De also found herself under attack from athletes like Jwala Gutta and former hockey captain Viren Rasquinha. However, anticipating a twitter storm she went into damage control and immediately posted a tweet rooting for Bindra.
Ranking third in the list is Virender Sehwag’s remarkable tweet where he combines the US Presidential Election and Demonetisation in one single tweet. Prime Minister of India Narendra Singh Modi had declared the demonetization scheme on the very day when the United States was witnessing presidential elections, being fought between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton.
With two hot topics trending on social media, Viru encapsulated both of them with a subtlety by unleashing another social media gem on Twitter.
Piers Morgan’s tweet on mocking India for their poor show in Rio Olympics occupies the fourth position in the list. British Journalist Piers Morgan mocked India’s performance at Rio after the nation’s biggest ever contingent could only garner 2 medals.
Piers tweeted, "Country with 1.2 billion people wildly celebrates 2 losing medals. How embarrassing is that?"
His criticism, however, wasn’t received well by users all across India and they started trolling him on the micro-blogging site.
The final tweet on the list is Gautam Gambhir's inspirational tweet on being snubbed for India-England series. Gambhir was considered a favourite to make a comeback to the national team squad ahead of India’s Test series against England. Sadly, the decision was not in his favour despite performing brilliantly in Ranji Trophy.
The left-handed then tweeted an inspirational message soon after BCCI announced the squad.
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