"Franchise or players have no role in this": Ash expresses on MI's fan war

Veteran India and Rajasthan Royals offspinner Ravichandran Ashwin has come out in support of Mumbai Indians MI captain Hardik Pandya after the latter has been at the receiving end of vicious trolling and booing saying the fan wars are taking an ugly turn in IPL17During a livestream on his YouTube channel a user asked Ashwin ldquowhether it is time for MI to issue a statement on making Pandya the captain saying it was a poor transfer from the managementrdquo In response Ashwin said ldquoNeither has any role to play Neither the franchise nor the player I think the responsibility and the onus lies on the fansrdquoFollowing his switch from Gujarat Titans to MI in what has been seen as a coup and replacing Rohit Sharma as captain ahead of IPL17 Pandya was mercilessly subjected to boos and jeers by fans who also used a discriminatory term for him at times during the fivetime championsrsquo first two games in Ahmedabad and Hyderabad where they ended up on a losing sideAlso Read IPL 2024 Quintons fifty Pooran and Krunals late heroics help LSG post 199Talking about Pandya facing fansrsquo ire in both of MIrsquos matches so far Ashwin said ldquoHave you seen this happen in any other country Have you seen Joe Root and Zak Crawley fans fight Or have you seen Root and Jos Buttler fans fight Itrsquos crazy Have you seen fans of Steve Smith and Pat Cummins fight in Australia Irsquove said this many times This is cricketlsquoThis is a cinema culturersquoldquoThis is a cinema culture I know there are things like marketing positioning and branding I donrsquot deny it I donrsquot believe in all this on my side but itrsquos not wrong to indulge either Fan wars should never go in this ugly route One should remember which country these players representmdashour country So then what warrants a cricketer getting booedrdquoAshwin also called for the booing of cricketers to stop citing previous examples of how Sachin Tendulkar Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid played under each otherrsquos captaincy as players and how the trio later played under the leadership of MS Dhoni in the Indian team ldquoI donrsquot understand If you donrsquot like a player and boo a player why should a team come out to issue a clarification We act like this has not happened before Ganguly played under Sachin and vice versaldquoThese two have both played under Dravidrsquos captaincy These three have played under Anil Kumble and all of them have played under Dhoni When they were under Dhoni these players were cricket jambhavans giants Dhoni too played under ViratldquoWe need to get our act together Do you know what the problem is We are all happy to sit in our houses look outside and have someone else pick up the trash We donrsquot want to bother doing it ourselves We should correct ourselves first This is realtime sports Realtime sports have realtime emotionslsquoNot against hero worshiprsquoldquoHow we go beyond that counter it and find a balance to play cricket is what this is all about A real sport can never be compared to cinema Heroes and hero worship are great I am all for it Enjoy what you like about your favourites but not at the cost of putting another player down This is one thing Irsquod love to see disappear from the face of the earth in our countryrdquo he concludedMumbai Indians who are yet to get off the mark will play their first home match of the season against the Sanju Samsonled Rajasthan Royals at Wankhede on MondayThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever