Sunday, February 19, 2006

Is this what you call CROWD SUPPORT??


“Your Support played a huge part in our success this week”.
These are the exact words spoken by the Indian tennis teen sensation Sania Mirza
At the award ceremony, after she and her partner Liezel Huber, defeated the Russian pair Elena and Anastassia, in the doubles final at the Bangalore Open.And when I heard these words and gave a thought about how the final match went about, I must say, her words really carried weight, and indeed the crowd did play a part in the win.But according to me, in a NEGATIVE way.I just lost count of the number of times, the match referee had to request the crowd to maintain silence during the match. There was non-stop whistling by some irritating guy or could be a group of guys, who just didn’t understand the meaning of ‘please’, and I am sure he didn’t care, if his whistling while the players were serving, was affecting their concentration.
The Russian girls were literally pleading with the match referee and asking him to request the crowd not to make so much noise atleast while they served. But the referee’s words fell on deaf ears. And this lack of concentration was very visible, with the girls making so many double faults in their serves. It was as if the sadist crowd, was finding joy in seeing that their noise was disturbing the game and the players were approaching the referee to complain. I seriously don’t understand the mentality of such people, who inspite of being told not to do something are hell bent on doing the same very thing and taking pride in doing so.I understand that the crowd had come there to support Sania, and was proud of her for bringing pride and joy to India, but come on, disturbing the game didn’t help anyone and made the matters worse. I would say such kind of behavior, will give a bad impression about Indians to the whole world, as such sports events have TV coverage and the whole world is watching such tennis tournaments. So instead of making India proud, such behavior puts India in bad light, in front of the world.
Don’t know what is the best way of handling such people? Is having the security personnel drag and push such people out, the best solution or what??

1 comment:

gtholpadi said...

Maga, this is the first time you actually criticised someone in a blog. :o) Now you are in new waters. Keep sailing...