How on earth can tennis superstar Maria Sharapova say she doesn’t know Sachin Tendulkar? For die-hard Sachin fans, that innocuous off-court remark in Wimbledon on Saturday was too hard to digest.
So, they bombarded her Facebook page with enlightening posts. Some aggressive, some downright abusive! Frenzied, they also turned to Twitter, and posed a sarcasm-laced query: “Who is Sharapova.” #whoismariasharapova was trending soon, worldwide. The tweets from upset Sachin fans came quick and fast. Here’s one: “Who is Maria Sharapova? She is the one who doesn’t know who Sachin Tendulkar is.”
The five-time Grand Slam winner definitely needed a reality check. She had to know that her official page had only 13.6 million “Likes,” a far cry from Tendulkar’s 20.1 million “Likes.” And if the tennis great had her huge Twitter follower base, she couldn’t ignore this: The demigod of cricket commanded 3.2 million more followers than her!
Triggering this latest social network battle was a harmless poser to Sharapova during her post-match conference at Wimbledon: “Sachin Tendulkar was the other person who came in at the same time as David (Beckham). Do you know who Sachin is?” She had apparently never heard the name. Maria just said, “I don’t.”
That was enough to spark a mini-tsunami on Facebook and Twitter. How could she not know the batting legend, the conqueror of records galore? Here’s one argument culled out from the myriad posts that coloured Sharapova’s page: “Since she is a sportsperson, she ought to know about fellow sportspersons. Particularly if they were legends in their sport.”
But what the fans didn’t know was that Sachin was at his formal best in Wimbledon, totally oblivious of what sparked the whole issue. He had come to the Royal Box to watch the game with other sporting legends. In close proximity were the likes of footballers Sir Bobby Charlton, David Beckham, track cyclist Bradley Wiggins and rugby great, Chris Robshaw.