Sri Lankan opener Niroshan Dickwella did not seem to take Virender Sehwag’s ‘practice game’ dig in good humour as he lashed out at him indirectly in a post-match interview after Sri Lanka beat India in ICC Champions Trophy 2017. Sehwag has recently been on the receiving end of a few players after his comments on the respective teams. First, it was former Pakistan wicketkeeper Rashid Latif who lashed out at Sehwag and in doing so crossed the line and became the reason for outrage on social media. Though, Dickwella had his reasons and expressed his views in a rather sophisticated way than Latif.
Dickwella said, “I’ve heard that they (India) take this game as a practice game and …I don’t know and this is the return. We are not annoyed (by India treating this as a practice game), but we don’t really care about these things, we don’t think about the social media,”
The 23-year-old surely did care about these things unlike what he said as he continued and let out his emotions, “But it hurts sometimes for us because…both the teams play cricket at the same level and they think this is a practice game and we got our revenge,” he added.
India were stunned by Sri Lanka in the group stages as they won in a do-or-die game for them and kept their chances in ongoing ICC Champions Trophy alive beating India by 7 wickets and winning the game quite comprehensively. Though they could not continue their run against Pakistan and lost in a virtual quarter-final due to poor fielding efforts.
Dickwella seemed upset because of the fact that they were calling Sri Lanka ‘s win over India an upset. Whereas the Sri Lankan opener considers them to be equal in stature in comparison to India.
