'A professional player is...' - Fans call out Dinesh Karthik for his remarks on 'North-East' teams in Vijay Hazare Trophy

Tamil Nadu and Arunachal Pradesh locked horns in the Elite Group C match at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. Arunachal Pradesh's skipper Kamsha Yangfo won the toss and asked Tamil Nadu to bat first.

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When Tamil Nadu was batting first, the entire cricketing fraternity happened to witness the storm of the 26-year-old batting sensation Narayan Jagadeesan. The wicketkeeper-batter went on to break all the records of batting on List-A cricket with an unprecedented knock of 277 run off just 141 balls with 25 boundaries and 15 sixes to his name.

In the aftermath of Jagadeesan's swashbuckling knock, the entire cricketing fraternity was in full awe of the Chennai batter. Meanwhile, his senior in the Tamil Nadu cricket circuit and senior Indian wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik came up with a slightly different stance. The 37-Year-old made a statement regarding the positioning of Northeast teams in the Elite Groups of the Vijay Hazare Trophy.

"Also on another side note, does it make sense to have the northeast teams play the elite teams in the league phase? It just topples the run rates of teams and imagines if a match against one of these teams gets rained off! Can’t they have a separate group and then qualify ?," reads one of the two tweets Karthik posted after the match between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

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These remarks from the 2007 20-20 World Cup winner Indian cricketer didn't go down well with some of the Indian cricket fans. They immediately took to Twitter and slammed Karthik for doing 'discrimination' while analyzing the structure of domestic cricket.

Here's how fans reacted:

A professional player is saying something like this.
What can we expect from others ?

These guys don't even want to give chances to their own countrymen. The Indian mainstream always ignore North East and now want to exclude them from cricket. https://t.co/V3r9RrQeNx

— Third Man 🏏 (@Sulay177) November 21, 2022

Assam (Northeast state) defeated your ELITE team 'Karnataka' couple of days back. Follow domestic cricket properly before tweeting. Thanks! https://t.co/Q2duYJjXqH pic.twitter.com/BMHZcfb00K

— Siddhartha Deb (@siddhu1059) November 21, 2022

Plate group with the weakest teams, maybe yes. But how does it make sense to bracket all North East teams together when teams like Assam are topping the group and Tripura are beating the defending Vijay Hazare champions? https://t.co/n0pjnaJoAr

— Pranaav (@Pranaav_512) November 21, 2022

Weaker teams need to play stronger teams more often (at international level, Associate and Full Members).

How will NE cricketers get recognised otherwise, become mainstream? Haven't they been sidelined for decades?

And how will matches like this happen?https://t.co/x2DnxDfu1L

— Abhishek Mukherjee (@ovshake42) November 21, 2022

Speaking of the match between Arunachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, it was completely a one-sided match the latter posted a mammoth total of 506 runs for the loss of only two wickets in the 50 overs. Whereas they bundled up the opposition only on 71 runs while defending the target and won the match by a record-breaking margin of 435 runs.