Mohammad Kaif responds to trolls, says sport is one of the best ways to break barriers

Religious bigots in India have kept themselves quite busy in recent times, targeting cricketers over issues that can be considered trivial, to say the least. The likes of Mohammed Shami, Irfan Pathan, Mohammad Kaif have all been targeted by Islamic fundamentalists in the past over pictures that they put up on social media.

Whether it was pacer Shami, who received a shower of abuses for a picture of him with his wife, the latter wearing a sleeveless dress. Or Pathan, whose burqa-clad spouse was targeted for exposing her fingernails. Or Kaif, who was recently targeted by fanatics over a picture of him playing chess with his son in a post on his Facebook page.

When u are playing a sport,its one of d best ways to break barriers of caste, creed,religion.Wish everyone plays more.#SportsBeyondReligion pic.twitter.com/RSwkJMMoAB

— Mohammad Kaif (@MohammadKaif) July 30, 2017

Kaif – who is remembered widely for orchestrating the memorable chase against England in the final of the Natwest Trophy in 2002 – responded to the trolls on his official Twitter account on Sunday, describing chess as a “wonderful game”.

The 36-year-old, who has also represented India in 13 Tests and 125 one-day internationals, further said that passing along the knowledge of a game that was invented in India was not a crime, adding that sport was “one of d best ways to break barriers of caste, creed, religion.” The tweet, posted on Sunday morning, garnered more than 1,000 likes.

It is a known fact that Kaif is quite active on social media, and has nearly half-a-million followers on both Facebook and Twitter. Notably, the former middle-order batsman had earlier criticised the communal violence that broke out in Basirhat, West Bengal earlier this month. He had also been targeted for sharing images of himself performing surya namaskar on microblogging website Twitter.