Imagine Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachhan and cricket legend Virender Sehwag batting together for a cause. On Thursday night, as India tried to absorb the double joy made possible by Haryana wrestler Sakshi Malik and Badminton star PV Sindhu, Sr Bachhan and Sehwag played another game on social media — of mocking the “naysayers” and those who had previously derided Indian Olympians.

Their prime target was the obvious socialite Shobhaa De who had raised a storm a few days ago, tweeting that Indian Olympians were interested only in clicking selfies, wasting money, opportunity and returning empty handed. While Sehwag started his innings early in the day after Sakshi’s bronze medal win. He retweeted one of the tweets by a parody account in his name which had Sakshi’s image, saying how the bronze medal is looking good (Shobha De raha hai) on her. Sehwag also commented one should not do what doesn’t suits him or her (jo shobha na de). Sehwag’s statement was an instant hit with over 10,000 likes and 11,000 thousand retweets. Amitabh too joined Sehwag, telling him, “Your sense of humour has hit another sixer, out of the stadium.”


”

Throughout the day both posted several tweets about the girl child, women power and sports. In one of the tweets, Sehwag suggested, if you don’t kill a girl child, she can bring Olympic medal.

By the evening when Sindhu defeated her Japanese rival in the semifinal of badminton event, Amitabh too couldn’t stop himself from taking a dig at De.

Sr Bachchan also congratulated Sindhu, tweeting, “Never ever underestimate power of female gender ! #PVSindhu you have destroyed so many ‘naysayers’ .. you are the PRIDE of INDIA !”

As Sindhu gets ready to fight for the gold today, the debate between De and the rest of the country should reach its logical conclusion — that one should never mock professional athletes, even if they lose fighting.