Cricket is a team game. 11 contribute in the team’s overall performance. Either everyone wins or everyone loses. Draw is a rare exception in a limited over match.  

Now let’s have a look at India’s performance against Pakistan in a T20 World Cup match on Sunday. Bifurcate the performance on three scales – poor, average, good.  

On the batting front, both Rohit Sharma (0) & KL Rahul’s (3) showing were poor. Hardik Pandya (11), Suryakumar Yadav (13) & Ravindra Jadeja (11) were average, while skipper Kohli (57) & Rishabh Pant (39) were good.

Now comes to bowling. All the five bowlers – Bhuvneshwar, Shami, Bumrah, Chakravarthy & Jadeja – failed to take any wicket. On the bowling economy front, Shami’s was the poorest. But putting the entire blame for India's loss on Shami’s poor bowling average is totally wrong. The other Indian bowlers were also not effective, they were average.

Shami gave 43 runs in 23 balls. If Shami was not in the team or Kohli didn’t let him ball on Sunday, in that calculation Pakistan would have got 36 balls (23 bowled by Shami & 13 spared balls) to score 43 runs for a win. Going by average of India’s remaining four bowlers (7.73), Pakistan would have easily surpassed the target with three balls remaining.

Leaving the emotions aside, the statistics clearly show that Shami was not the only one to be blamed for India losing to brilliant batting by Pakistan’s openers.

But then why was he the only one targeted on the social media, why the abuses were hurled on him?  

Shami was targeted because of his religion. Is being a Muslim is a crime in India?

We should not forget that in a country of 1.3 billion plus population, coming from different regions/religions/caste, he is among the 11 extraordinary ones, who got a chance to play for INDIA. Not to forget that cricket is the most played sport in the country, increasing the level of competition.  

Targeting Shami just because he is a Muslim, is a blot on India’s sporting culture.

No religion teaches us hatred, it’s a man-made thing.