In sports, ideally favouritism and biases should be set aside, but the need of a winner often leads to some dubious decisions and some of the decisions in Commonwealth Games 2022 seems to be quite berserk, to say the least, especially for India with cheating rampant at the CWG
The recent incident is the example, in a Friday night match of Indian women team’s semi final defeat to Australia, an apparent clock glitch happened during the penalty shootout.
How India Was Robbed Of Medals By Cheating, Unfair And Biased Decisions In Cricket, Boxing, Hockey And Long Jump At The Commonwealth Games (CWG) 2022
Protest 🙏
*Remove Archery and Shooting where Indians dominate ☑️
*Make utterly biased decisions against Indians in boxing and Squash ☑️
*Let Aussies retake a missed penalty stroke, coz the “clock didn’t start” ☑️Great England Robbery Games 2022. #CWC2022 #Cheating #Hockey
— henry (@henry18VK) August 5, 2022
Djokovic didn't adhere to Australian rules and Tahlia McGrath did in England, and there in lies the difference. https://t.co/Xs68dQyK3G
— Sa. Gomesh | ச. கோமேஷ் (@SaGomesh) August 7, 2022
Aus media shouted on Rohit, pant and the few other players a lot when they went for a stroll in 2020/21 bgt for breaking the bio-bubble but why tahlia is being allowed to play here then while being tested covid-19 positive? What if our players catch covid-19? https://t.co/LzT75QMEEK
— Starlord (@NotTheDarkBlade) August 7, 2022
A week ago, Bronze medalist from 2018, Aneesh Pillai of India wasn’t allowed to compete in his event after he tested positive for COVID-19
Yesterday, Australia’s Tahlia McGrath plays in the womens cricket final despite testing positive for the same virus pic.twitter.com/CcAaHxN2yK
— Aniket Mishra (@aniketmishra299) August 8, 2022
Australia’s first attempt at goal was saved by captain Savita Punia. However, the goalie’s effort was rendered null as the referee asked to retake it to Australia citing that the clock hadn’t started. At that time, India conceded.
After the unfortunate defeat, the skipper told Sony Sports that, “It was a very close match and sometimes these decisions don’t go your way, it becomes tougher. The first stroke was asked to be retaken. It was tough for us but, at the same time, these are part of the game. We have to move on”.
Though the Punia had accepted the defeat, her coach Janneke Schopman was a little more irked as she said, “I just don’t understand. Australia wasn’t complaining, everyone agreed. It was a great stop. Even the umpires did not understand”.
However, women’s hockey isn’t the only scenario where one has seen this kind of incident. Another incident involved long jumper Murali Sreeshankar.
The incident of Murali was quite an upsetting one. It was just 1cm that stood between him and the silver and gold medal.
In the 4th attempt he had at least crossed the 8m mark by a margin, according to the dents that he had made on the sand pit. But, the attempt was not legal because of the slightest margins which to the naked eye didn’t look like an overstep on the board.
Another incident involves the Boxing Biases. The boxer Ashish and Lovlina, who were medal prospects for India, were ousted before they reached the semi-finals due to the blatant bias.
In the boxing match of Ashish, everyone could have sworn that India was miles better than England’s Aaron Bowen. After the scores were tied, for the first two rounds, India upperclassed the game.
However, there was one referee who was constantly favouring Aaron and he was the only one to give a perfect 30.
On the other hand, in Lovlina’s match, there were a lot of things that went against her. Be it simple miscalculation of a referee’s score or deducting points without warning, the trend kept continuing.
The results of Sanjeet and Shiva Thappa were also debatable. These kinds of biases like the clock glitch in the hockey semifinals can create a psychological impact on players as the Coach Schopman said, “I think those people just don’t understand the game and the emotions that are involved”.