AIB comic Tanmay Bhat incurred the wrath of Sachin Tendulkar’s fans when his snapchat video titled 'Sachin vs Lata Civil War' offended the sentiments of the lovers of the cricketing legend. The satirical video shows Sachin Tendukar and one of India’s finest singers, Lata Mangeshkar getting into a debate over who is a better batsman – Tendulkar or his heir apparent in the Indian team, Virat Kohli.
The debate gets uglier as the two are shown exchanging barbs and jibes. These barbs are exactly what has offended the fans of both Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar, who is considered to be a mother figure by the cricketer. Tanmay Bhat used face swap and mimicked both the legends in the video.
Typical of Tanmay Bhat and AIB’s humor, the video didn’t go down well with most who found the lampooning of the two greats bordering on disgusting. Bhat, however, is not the first celebrity who has found himself at the receiving end of the ire of fans of the Master Blaster.
Here are 5 other names who were torn to shreds for challenging the batsman’s demi god status in the country.
#1 Maria Sharapova
The now tainted tennis star attracted many a men to the tennis court with her power packed game, and as it happened, two men in attendance during one of her matches at the 2014 Wimbledon included David Beckham and a certain Sachin Tendulkar. In the post match conference, Sharapova had nice words to say about Beckham whom she described as a “really nice person” and an “incredible football player.” On this a reporter replied: “Sachin Tendulkar was the other person who came in at the same time as David. Do you know who Sachin is?”
And the moment she uttered ‘No’, all hell broke loose on social media in India. Taking it as a grievous insult, the netizens of India hit back at her and at once made #whoismariasharapova a trending topic worldwide on Twitter. The uproar came to an end only when Tendulkar told NDTV in an interview, "Sharapova's comments were not disrespectful. She doesn't follow cricket."
#2 Mike Denness
The Scotland born Mike Denness had a 28 match Test career and led his side in 12 of them. And although his unpopularity among his team mates created quite a news, none of it compared to the buzz he generated when, as a match referee, he alleged that Sachin Tendulkar had tampered with the seam of the ball in the second test between India and South Africa held at Port Elizabeth in 2001-02.
But the fans of the Mumbaikar could not digest the allegation of ‘cheating’ on their god and the Indian masses smelled racism behind the actions of Denness, who had also handed out suspension to captain Sourav Ganguly. The star batsman received the backing of his board as BCCI insisted that Denness be removed if South Africa wanted India to play the final Test. Back home, Indian fans were doing what they do best in such controversies, burning effigies of Denness. While Sachin came out unscathed from the incident, Denness was not reappointed by the ICC as a Match Referee.
#3 British Airways
Not only people, but entities like British Airways were brought down on their knees by fans of the batsman, who has 100 international hundreds to his name. The issue was that while travelling with British Airways, Tendulkar’s luggage was tagged to the wrong destination. the 42-year-old took to Twitter to express his anger over the incident.
All was still well until the individual in charge of the company's social media account decided to step in and tweeted an apology only to ask the batsman to DM his full name and address. This led to massive outrage on Twitter and British Airways was bombarded with highly sarcastic tweets.
#4 Shoaib Akhtar
The pacer had quite a few battles with the Little Master on field and came second in most of them, the most famous instance of this being the 2003 World Cup match when Tendulkar with his opening partner Sehwag blasted the leather off Akhtar’s 150k thunderbolts. Once done with his injury prone career, Shoaib Akhtar took to writing a controversial autobiography, aptly titled ‘Controversially Yours’.
Not many would have cared of the autobiography had it not been for one claim that the pacer made in it. Cricket’s enfant terrible claimed that Tendulkar wasn’t a match winner and went on to append an incident of a Test match at Faisalabad, when he apparently ‘scared’ the batsman with his pace. Obviously, the fans and experts laughed off these claims and an Amul comic came up with the best line to sum up the whole incident – “Tab bhi fekta tha, ab bhi fekta hai.”
#5 Dickie Bird
The veteran umpire, considered one of the best and most colourful umpires of cricket, angered many fans of the batsman when he didn’t include the right hander in his Test XI which he announced in 2013, preferring instead the services of the other little master Sunil Gavaskar. The Umpire who stood in 66 Tests and retired from the game in 1996, went a step ahead to exclude even Sir Donald Bradman from his team. Obviously, Sachin’s followers were not to take it kindly.
And on this, they even found support from ex cricketers. Former India batsman Chandu Borde surely wasn’t too pleased as he was quoted as saying "By this team, one can see how good is his cricketing knowledge. Statistics will tell you about Bradman and Tendulkar. One need not refer to his eleven. From my point of view, it's the English media which has made Bird an umpiring legend. He's always bias."
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