It was the mother of all meltdowns, and the sound reverberated in the echo chamber. The proliferation of YouTube channels and social media influencers has its downsides. For an old-timer like this correspondent, at times it’s pretty difficult, nigh on impossible in fact, to keep a tab on the microphones and cameras that are not ceremonial.
Cricket assignments in this country, even if it’s a Ranji Trophy match, are not soft beats where people can be put out to pasture. And it was the Champions Trophy, one of the most high-profile events in the calendar. Hindsight gives you the advantage to reflect, and the brain fade was many times bigger than Sunil Gavaskar losing it with Rex Whitehead and Dennis Lillee at the ‘G’ several moons earlier. It was a gaffe for sure and never did it intend to hurt anyone, let alone Boria Majumdar, my editor-in-chief at RevSportz and a lot more.
In my 28-year-old career as a cricket correspondent, I have missed only one press conference that I was assigned to cover. The transgression happened when I failed to turn up for a Joe Root presser during the 2016 T20 World Cup as I was performing my father’s last rites. So, during the Champions Trophy in Dubai earlier this year, when I was confused about a Shubman Gill press conference being over while I still stayed put at the ICC Academy, something in me snapped.
I let out my frustrations to a colleague who was accompanying me on the tour, but never did I think that it would be caught on camera and the clip would go viral. As someone who has been a print media journalist through and through, I still struggle to catch up with the nitty gritties of the ‘video’ world and how things work on social media that gives poison a platform.
Never did I think that the whole thing would be blown out of proportion. Jealous guys would pounce on it to run down RevSportz and its editor in particular. It was always going to be a futile attempt, but I still deeply regret going way over the top.
I put Boria in a spot. He was at the receiving end of vile abuse on social media. He took it but never said a harsh word to me. In fact, he backed me during the entire episode and called me ‘brother’.
Thanks are due to Sharmishtha Gooptu, our COO, as well. She stonewalled the criticism (read, abuse) and when I had a conversation with her over the phone the next day, she just said: “Everyone can have a bad day.”
When you get this kind of support, you walk the extra mile. RevSportz is the most happening sports media platform now because it stands on a foundation as solid as this. Boria has made the mother of all comebacks and he could do it because truth was his currency. He has his upbringing, education, hard work, skill set and many other qualities to fall back on. But above all, he is a great human being.
Boria and Sharmishtha dared to dream, and RevSportz is a by-product of that. It thrives on the Olympic motto — “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger). Welcome to 4. Aap jiyo hazaron saal…
