The fast bowler faced widespread abuse on social media – much of it tinged with Islamophobia – following India’s 10-wicket defeat to Pakistan
Shami is the only Muslim in India’s T20 World Cup squad.
“There’s a good reason why we are playing on the field and not some bunch of spineless people on social media that have no courage to actually speak to any individual in person,” Kohli said in Dubai, a day before India’s next fixture, against New Zealand. “They hide behind their entities and go after people through social media, making fun of people and that has become a source of entertainment in today’s world, which is so unfortunate and sad to see because this is literally the lowest level of human potential that one can operate at, and that’s how I look at these people.
“As I rightly mentioned before, to me attacking someone over their religion is the most, I would say, pathetic thing that a human being can do. Everyone has the right to voice their opinion and what they feel about certain situations, but I personally have never ever even thought of discriminating anyone over their religion. That is a very personal and sacred thing to every human being and that should be left there.
“We, as individuals, understand what we want to do on the field and the strength of character and mental toughness that we have and precisely doing what we are doing on the field none of these people are even in the vicinity to even imagine doing something like that. They don’t have the courage or spine to do that. So that is how I see things and this drama created on the outside is purely based on people’s frustrations, their lack of self confidence, their lack of compassion, hence they find it so amusing to go after people.
“So, we, as a group, understand how we need to stick together, how we need to back individuals, how we need to focus on our strengths. And whether people on the outside portray it: being that India can’t afford to lose a game… That’s none of our business. We play sport and we understand exactly how sport goes. How people think on the outside has no value whatsoever within our group. We’ve never focussed on it, we will never focus on it going forward either because as I said last time as well, people don’t understand what it takes to do the job on the field at the international level. We’re not going to go around and just announcing to everyone what we do and how we do it. We just carry on doing the business we’re supposed to do and if the game goes off, you take the learnings from it and move forward. Not one game is more important than the other. Every game of cricket is as important and so will be the case in the next game as well.”
More to follow…