New Delhi: Former Indian captain Kapil Dev on Tuesday backed master blaster Sachin Tendulkar over his nationalistic comments in which he described himself as being an Indian first and then a Maharashtrian.
Talking exclusively to Zeecric on the sidelines of Albatross
International Golf Junior Championship, Dev said that Sachin is absolutely right in claiming that “Mumbai is for all” and there is no regionalism in the game of cricket.
“Sachin is right is saying that he is an Indian first and then a Maharashtrian. I completely support him in this very thought,” Dev said.
In a rebuff to the “Marathi Manoos” plank of Shiv Sena and Raj Thackeray’s MNS, Tendulkar had said earlier that Mumbai is for all Indians. “Mumbai belongs to India. That is how I look at it. And I am a Maharashtrian and I am extremely proud of that but I am an Indian first,” said Tendulkar. However, this very patriotic comment by the legendary batsman earned him a lot of criticism from the Shiv Sena who claimed that ‘Sachin may be great, but is not greater than Maharashtra’. Party chief Bal Thackeray earlier wrote in Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece ‘Saamna’, that there was no need for Sachin to “take a cheeky single by making such remarks”. “By making these remarks, you have got run-out on the pitch of Marathi psyche. You were not even born when the ‘Marathi Manoos’ got Mumbai and 105 Marathi people sacrificed their lives to get Mumbai,” Thackeray said. Thackeray had also said that former Indian player Sunil Gavaskar who is also a Maharashtrian, helped young players of the state to get into the national team considering it to be a kind of service to his state. Dev, however, negated the statement by saying that Gavaskar never got involved in such regionalism and even if he did, it was something very wrong to do in sports. |
|---|
