NEW DELHI, 18 February 2003 — Indian crowds, incensed by their country’s poor performance against Australia at the World Cup, hurled black paint and motor oil at one cricketer’s home, held a mock funeral for the team and burned posters of the top players.
Fifty men burned posters of Indian captain Sourav Ganguly, top batsmen Sachin Tendulkar and Virendra Sehwag in Bombay yesterday and shouted slogans such as, "Down with Sourav."
"Cricketers should be stopped from appearing in advertisements. Only then will they perform," said Bombay municipal councilor Ashok Jadhav, who organized the protest to condemn the Indian cricketers for making commer-cials instead of practicing for the World Cup.
India’s nine-wicket defeat and its record low World Cup score of 125 runs against Australia on Saturday has angered cricket fans throughout the country. On its front page Monday, the Times of India said worried Indian com-panies had withdrawn television advertisements showing the crick-eters endorsing products.
The most violent outpouring was against the family home of team member Mohammad Kaif, newspapers reported. A mob flung plastic bags filled with black paint and oil at Kaif’s three-story family home in Allahabad, the Hindustan Times reported.
"My family members were fast asleep when the incident took place," the newspaper quoted Kaif’s father, Mohammad Tarif, as saying. Kaif’s family contacted police about the pre-dawn Sunday attack and demanded protection, the paper quoted Kaif’s brother, Asif, as saying.
Kaif, a right-handed middle-order batsman, has scored nine and zero in the two matches India has played at the World Cup.
The Indians have lost their last two limited-overs series, going down 4-3 to the West Indies at home before a 5-2 loss in New Zealand. The Indian squad, rated third favorite by bookmakers, has been dogged by misfortune in the past few months. Its bleak performance has been in contrast to media reports of multimillion dollar product endorsement deals the cricketers have signed, and reports that they filmed television ads instead of practicing more for the World Cup.
In Calcutta, scores of people conducted a mock funeral for the Indian team on Sunday, Press Trust of India news agency reported. The crowd chanted Hindu verses and scattered rose petals as they carried pictures of the Indian cricketers on a flower-decked stretcher, which was then set on fire. Security was stepped up around Ganguly’s sprawling residence in Calcutta, with pedes-trians barred from walking on the pavement in front of it.
