Cricket Australia’s Birthday tweet for Damien Fleming creates controversy on Twitter

ByAyesha d'Souza, SportsCafe Editor

04/24/2018

While Indian netizens were posting their words of love to celebrate Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar’s birthday today, Cricket Australia posted a Birthday wishes for Damien Fleming with a video that made Sachin fans unhappy. CA posted a video of Fleming bowling a yorker that knocked Tendulkar over.

Indian fans are very emotional when it comes to saving the pride of their heroes and most of the times, they go out of the way to take down anybody who raises questions on the integrity of their favourite cricketers. While Twitter banter in India among the various fans is a common occurrence, they came in all guns blazing to slam any foreigners if they - even if the counterparts don’t mean it in a bad way - disrespect their heroes.

Today, while the entire nation was celebrating the Sachin Tendulkar's birthday - the symbol of everything excellent about cricket - with posts on various social media sites, little did people remember that it was the birthday of former Aussie all-rounder Damien Fleming, who had a fair share of success in his short international career.

However, as expected, Fleming’s home board, Cricket Australia didn’t forget the birthday and posted a video of the pacer castling Sachin Tendulkar with a brilliant yorker in the Carlton & United Series in Perth in 2000.

Some gold from the man himself - happy birthday, Damien Fleming!
— cricket.com.au (@CricketAus)

While there was nothing wrong with it, given it has been a tradition for most cricket boards, to post a moment of glory to wish their former players “Happy Birthday”, the Indian fans started slamming Cricket Australia for the “irresponsible post” as it seemed like a mockery to Tendulkar.

Also sachin smashed Australian strong bowling attack back in 1998 😀
— HBD தலைவா 😍😍😍 (@freakoffl)

I think you missed this master stroke from our own against so called Swing King
— Kalai Selvan🇮🇳 (@kalais036)

No matter how many bans, Australians will never change...😁

On Sachin's Birthday you are posting a video how Damien Fleming bowled him. Couldn't you find another batsman instead of Sachin?
— शशांक (@iShhhshank)

However, one thing must be noted that while we, as Indians, put up some of Sachin’s absolutely outrageous shots to reminisce his brilliance, Cricket Australia were well within their rights to do the same for a player who has given them eight years of service. In fact, it should have been a moment of pride for Indian fans that to celebrate the birthday of a World Cup winner, they used a clip of him bowling over arguably the greatest batsmen who ever lived.

While we celebrate Tendulkar’s birthday with the utmost respect that we have for him, it must well be remembered that we need to respect someone else’s intention instead of taking them down every now and then. And it must well be remembered that the same Cricket Australia was the first to put up the highlights of Tendulkar crushing, smashing, and schooling the Aussies in THAT eventful evening of the Coca-Cola Cup in 1998, while our very own board - BCCI - forgot to do so.