What kind of ‘Love’ the ‘online generation’ have for the ‘Game’? By Roma Dehradun

What kind of ‘Love’ the ‘online generation’ have for the ‘Game’?
By Roma Dehradun
Cricket have been amongst the most popular sports in the world. Even in India there will be no home without having passionate fans of cricket superstars. The Englishmen game has got a lot of love, appreciation and support all over the world. We often see the love of fans to the sports heroes whether they are children or aged ones from the crowded stadiums to the online platforms, when the things are not going in our way. We have seen the support of fans to our representatives from the love of the children to the blessings of the aged ones. But this relationship between the game and the fans is not only about giving their love and support to the players but also about showing their resentment or frustration on the team or an individual player.
The way of showing anger by the fans is going bitter day by day.The Men’s T-20 World Cup is going on and India has faced defeat against Pakistan and New Zealand till now. The Indian Captain Virat Kohli has been always the target for the trolls whenever there is a loss. These emotionless-fans always use to drag the family members in the process of targeting a personal.
They are not only limited to the family or partners of the players. Now they have started targeting even the children of the sports personalities. And this is the same for this time also. A troller have targeted only nine-month-old daughter of the Indian Captain, Vamika Kohli. A tweet from a twitter account named @Criccrazygirl gave rape threat to the toddler and later on deleted the tweet.
This shows that how intolerant and inhumane these so called ‘Patriot’ have become on the behalf of the game. How can be a child responsible for his/her sportsperson father’s performance on the field as a Captain? What is the role of the child in a defeat faced by the Team? This is not for the first time with our sports personalities. These sick-mentality people have extend their area of ‘Freedom of Speech’ from a common man or a Bollywood celebrity to the children of our sports personalities.
It seems to be a disturbing trend as the Former Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s five-year-old daughter Ziva Dhoni was also issued a rape threat during IPL 2020 in October.
Multiple handles are also claiming that the tweet was not from an Indian account but from a Pakistani account. The question is that does this identity of Nationality matter? How can a person put a specific match of the game over the life of a child on the basis of his\her so- called Game-Love?
If this could happen to the daughters of two of India’s most powerful sportspersons, take a moment to just imagine what it must be like for millions of women and their children. According to a global survey by Plan International, more than 50% of girls and women between the ages of 15-25 have been cyberstalked, harassed and abuse online.
Of those surveyed, more than 7,000 girls said that they are more likely to be abused and harassed online than on streets.
While the social media allows the perpetrators and abusers to function anonymously and issue such barbaric threats, it makes the targets of the crime, specially children doubly vulnerable. There is a dire need to improve the Situation.