3 min readUpdated: Mar 18, 2026 04:49 PM IST
Spin legend R Ashwin slammed the rising superstar culture in Indian cricket, questioning if some players were actively invested in building their brands through social media fan armies with narratives that could villify fellow cricketers.
Ashwin raised concerns over the heightened attention that fan armies were garnering, claiming that the narratives that he often come across on social media platforms were topics of discussions in prior team environments. Ashwin, who retired from international cricket in late 2024, also hinted that the “disease” of raging fan-wars may be the result of a business model, activated by players themselves.
“There’s something of a disease going around at this point. A lot of these opinions that show up on social media through fan armies—I’ve heard them before, first-hand. Sometimes, I’ve heard these same views at a breakfast table or a lunch table, and later they appear online under some other name. That’s when you wonder—how is this happening?” Ashwin said at the Revsportz Conclave in Kolkata.
“I’m not saying players themselves are planting these opinions, but it is scary. Is there some sort of espionage going on? I’m not saying that’s exactly what’s happening, but there is surely some business structure involved. Today, every player is an entrepreneur, and pushing opinions outside can increase brand value or improve PR. I’m all for that. But speaking ill of another cricketer is something I would never do,” Ashwin said.
Ashwin recalled a recent instance when his technical analysis of India ODI and Test captain Shubman Gill’s dismissal patterns generated severe backlash on social media.
“Where did all this begin? We started creating narratives around players. We started painting a superhero culture, a cinematic culture. Who even talks about cricket now? Nobody speaks about the game itself,” Ashwin lamented.
“Some time ago, I put out a Twitter (X) thread about what Shubman was doing that was leading to his dismissals in a certain way. For me, it is always about the ‘what’ and the ‘why,’ never the ‘whom.’ But immediately it became about comparison—why only Shubman and not someone else? I was like, do you even follow what I do?,” Ashwin added.
