Former Indian cricketer Virendra Sehwag, while commenting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Indian dressing room following the World Cup final loss against Australia, said he has “never seen” any head of state offering this kind of moral support to a national team after their defeat.
The gesture by the prime minister will lift the morale of Indian players and encourage them to perform stronger in future tournaments, said Virendra Sehwag, who was part of the 2011 World Cup-winning Indian squad.
“It is very rare for a prime minister to meet players in the dressing room and lift their spirits after a crushing defeat. I have never seen a prime minister taking time out of his busy schedule to lend a shoulder to players heartbroken after a defeat,” Virendra Sehwag said on November 25, while speaking to news agency ANI.
“It was an incredible gesture by Prime Minister Modi to visit the dressing room and boost the morale of the boys. It was a time when the boys needed some hand-holding, a gesture of solidarity and support. In such lows, you need someone to comfort you like family members do. I believe it was a touching gesture that will go a long way to motivating our boys ahead of future engagements, especially multilateral events. It will motivate us to cross the final hurdle next time,” the ICC Hall-of-Famer added.
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India, which won 10 matches in a row in the recently concluded World Cup, lost in the final against Australia. The latter, headed by Pat Cummins, bagged its sixth ODI World Cup title.
In the final match played in Ahmedabad, where Modi was in attendance, India was put to bat first. The team was restricted to a below-par score of 240, which was chased down by Australia in 43 overs with six wickets in hand.
A section of Modi’s critics, including his top political rival and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, took the “panauti (inauspicious)” jibe against the prime minister, linking him to India’s defeat in the final.
“You don’t lose a World Cup final because of any single individual. Our loss to Australia will spur us to chase glory in the next World Cup final,” Sehwag was quoted as saying in the ANI report, in the context of critics linking Modi’s attendance to the defeat in the World Cup final.