Continuing to whip up emotions, Times Now also ran a poll<\/a>, \u201cCan India play with a ‘terror state’?<\/em>\u201d The nation, it seems was divided on the issue and despite the best efforts of the channel to mould public opinion about it, 40% were still interested in watching the match.<\/p>\n Though the channel didn\u2019t tweet on the scores or the result, it couldn\u2019t keep itself away from the stadium for very long, particularly when Vijay Mallya was spotted<\/a> there.<\/p>\n Republic<\/em><\/strong>, the new kid on the block was rather mute about the match. It tweeted statements of Major Gaurav Arya<\/a> and Major General GD Bakshi<\/a>, the two army men whose ‘nationalist’ views are considered a must whenever such topics are discussed. The statements were on expected lines that the BCCI should have avoided playing the match and let us call it off.<\/p>\n Seeing that its #NationFirstNoCompromise hashtag is not getting much traction, by the end of the day, Republic had abandoned any plans of not tweeting the results. India had won the match, and sulking about it had little value. So, Republic announced<\/a> India\u2019s victory with a tweet.<\/p>\n Zee<\/em><\/strong> clearly won the patriotism race, leaving the other two ‘nationalist’ TV channels behind. Most vocal in its protests, the self-appointed custodians of national interest wanted to know<\/a> what is more important, cricket or national interest?<\/p>\n Subhash Chandra\u2019s tweets to announce the boycott of the match by Zee media immediately took the group\u2019s standing up by several notches in the eyes of the nationalists. \u201cZee News, Zee Hindustan, WION, DNA and all other news channels from Zee Media will not be covering any news about India Pak match<\/em>\u201d, tweeted<\/a> Chandra. In his words<\/a>, it was a way to \u201ctell our Army that the people for whom they risk their life are more interested in supporting them than cheering for cricket match<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n Zee also put out videos with an emotional appeal to boycott cricket with Pakistan.<\/p>\n Which side are you playing for this Sunday? Indian Army or Cricket Merchants? Decide India!! pic.twitter.com\/ZjzX4YDngF<\/a><\/p>\n — Sudhir Chaudhary (@sudhirchaudhary) June 3, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The featured hashtag, #SabseBadaDroh, was Zee\u2019s way of declaring all those supporting the match as some kinds of \u201cdrohis (Traitors)\u201d. \u201cZeeNews is boycotting #IndvPak match in respect of our soldiers. Are you?<\/em>\u201d was the question the channel asked<\/a> its viewers, who by then had surfed on to another channel to watch the match.<\/p>\n They brought up a Pak Army video<\/a> to rally support for the call to boycott but video or not, the match was going ahead. <\/p>\n Most of the nationalist supporters cheered the move of Zee Group and joined the call to boycott the match. But as the game got under way, they watched it on other channels, cheering loudly for India. A fine example of this were the two tweets of Babita Phogat.<\/p>\n The Zee group anchors were meanwhile brimming with nationalism. They had decided that they were the only ones worthy to be called genuine nationalists as Sudhir Chaudhary tweeted<\/a> that ZeeNews was \u201cexposing fake nationalists today both in media and politics<\/em>\u201d. \u201c\u0926\u0941\u0936\u094d\u092e\u0928 \u092a\u093e\u0915\u093f\u0938\u094d\u0924\u093e\u0928 \u0938\u0947 \u0915\u094d\u0930\u093f\u0915\u0947\u091f \u0915\u094d\u092f\u094b\u0902 \u0916\u0947\u0932\u0947 \u0939\u093f\u0902\u0926\u0941\u0938\u094d\u0924\u093e\u0928 ?<\/em>\u201d was Rohit Sardana\u2019s impassioned appeal<\/a>. \u201cToday is not the day! They would be playing with nation’s emotions<\/em>\u201d, tweeted<\/a> Rubika Liyaquat in the same tone.<\/p>\n Zee News positioned itself on a pedestal as the only one willing to sacrifice<\/a> TRPs for a nationalist cause.<\/p>\n Even though they were boycotting the match, they couldn\u2019t keep away from the excitement for very long. While Sardana kept track of the trending position of their #SabseBadaDroh hashtag, Chaudhury continued to engage with twitter users, from a position of moral high ground. When someone tweeted<\/a> about blocking Zee, his response was, \u201cIt’s sad Indian Army protects people like you who sell their nation for a cricket match. This is #SabseBadaDroh<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n Once India won the match, the “sacrifice” of Zee was forgotten and social media burst out in celebration. Chaudhary tweeted<\/a> to remind everyone, “Cricket team won but India lost!<\/em>“. The most retweeted response<\/a> to Chaudhary was one that said, “Cricket team won, India won but Zee lost<\/em>“.<\/p>\n Thus ended the battle of the nationalist channels. Till the next India-Pakistan match…..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the most patriotic of them all? “Should India play Pakistan”, is the question that is inevitably asked in the run up to every India Pakistan cricket match. With the recent escalation of the tensions between the two countries due to cross border strikes, terrorist incidents and Kulbhushan Jadhav […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"an_content_type":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-2926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
![\"Babita](\"http:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2017\/06\/babita-phogat-u-turn-on-cricket-1024x882.jpg\")
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