The recent India versus Pakistan T20 World Cup match saw the much expected highs and lows of the game. It must be said that the spirit of cricket remained intact as players from both sides played an amazing game and the better team, Pakistan, prevailed in the latest round.

It was true even after the match, as players from both sides were seen interacting positively with young Pakistani players taking cricketing advice from MS Dhoni – who has a strong following in that country. Commentators and spectators alike highlighted how the 'spirit of the game' was on full display away from the politics at the subcontinent.

However, the real 'match' occurred soon after this game with Mohammed Shami becoming the player to be trolled. What is especially sad – this Shami-bashing trend started from within the country, on Twitter, that too from a fake account. And our Lutyens-esque, 'champions' of human rights (read hue and cry), elite, educated, English speaking section of our society fell for it!

In a classic scene straight from Bollywood, a Muslim player was blamed for India's loss and surprise-surprise was asked to prove his loyalty to the country. Shami who is no stranger to such controversies plays for India – period. He's a proud member of Team India – on and off the field. His cricketing career is a testament to that fact.

Unfortunately, Indian media and their associated ilks soon started to stir the pot and fell for the plot. In their chase for TRPs, viewership, engagement, they spiced up this issue.

So how did we get here?

It all started when a fake Twitter handle – @vaikivannavan – posted this:

This, now deleted handle 'predicted' that Shami would be subjected to online abuse if India lost against Pakistan. As per 'predictions', 16 abusive posts were made under Shami's recent Instagram update. Out of which, 8 were targeted at his Nationality/ Religion. The remaining being generic.

A search on this trolling across various social media platforms failed to determine any more abuse against Shami other than a news report which stated Facebook removing these online abuses aimed at Shami. Even though Facebook deleted those abusive posts from their Instagram platform, there are others who ensured spreading this venom – one such individual is the self-styled Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah, editor of 'The Kashmir Walla' magazine.

Others who similarly fell for the plot includes comedian Sahil Shah, author & podcaster Mohamed Zeeshan and pop culture observer, reviewer Pramit Chatterjee.

Soon enough, India-basher Al-Jazeera took notice, with their producer Sana Saeed tweeting the now deleted handle of @vaikivannavan, without realising the handle to be fake and stirred the hornet nest even further, thus internationalising this fake narrative. This not only portrayed India in a negative light, it also shows how media and media personalities can be ignorant, dim-witted and mindless in the age of digitisation.

As can be seen, the main handle which tweeted first about Shami facing the flak is now deleted. However, eagle-eyed observers shared the following:

This soon snowballed, with many taking the opportunity to bash the cohesive culture of India:

Others like Barkha Dutt and Arfa Khanum took the bait like fish to the line and jumped on the solidarity bandwagon. These so called journalists failed the first step of journalism – verification of facts. Ms. Dutt dragged the entire cricketing fraternity along the way. They failed to realise this incident is nothing but fake and meant to stoke communal fire in the country. Where were they when Hindus in Bangladesh were being attacked, their pujo pandals being vandalised by Islamist goons?

All this bruhaha became easy fuel for Pakistani trolls and bots to fire up anti-India, anti-Hindu, and communalism rhetoric aimed towards India. Thanks to our own doing, due to our own people, Pakistan won again:

The country where minorities are facing daily human rights abuse, a section of the Muslim faithful are victimised and considered non-Muslims, where being anyone other than a Punjabi is considered second-class citizen, soon became the champion of Muslims and Indian Muslims. Fiery rhetorics by Waqar Younis and Fawad Chaudhary proves the point that the mentality of Pakistan remains stuck in the 8th century. And these personalities mentioned above – without verification, without thinking, gave fuel to the fire for Pakistan.

All it took was one tweet from a fake handle for the vultures from Pakistan to enter the fray

The victim of all this remains – Shami and to an extent India. At least our side of the people should have realised that a player's performance is not tantamount to their loyalty of the country. Nor must we be ignorant to fall prey towards hate and negative vitriol. 

The full timeline of event can be found here:

A visual representation of the "Orchestrated Disinformation Campaign supported by Useful Idiots"
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— Counter Propaganda Division (@CounterDivision) October 26, 2021