This incident has brought to light, the many faces of India's online crowd - boorish, obnoxious, with a sense of self importance that is utterly embarrassing.
The manner in which we react to any Sachin-baiting is to a large extent a factor of our utter lack of sporting heroes.
In a country that doesn't like playing any sport – and which has a deep disdain and fear especially of contact sports (our idea of fun, unlike in the West or even large parts of Asia, is eating samosas and namkeen in front of the TV on weekends) – all our stars, superstars and sporting gods, like Sachin, are therefore from the world of cricket. Because that’s all we have.
We have lost our hockey prowess, we languish at the bottom of the FIFA heap as far as football is concerned (at number 147 in the world!), and aren’t good at much else, whether it is tennis, volleyball, basketball, wrestling or shooting.
No wonder a nation of 1.2 billion erupts in collective ecstasy when an entire Olympic squad returns with one gold medal.
We can’t keep protesting at the slightest hint of criticism. Such petulance is the mark not of a great nation but of a country that thinks, long after the white man unshackled us and left our shores, that it is still the underdog.