Indian women’s basketball captain Shireen Limaye has opened up about abuse she received on social media after India lost all the games during the recently concluded FIBA Women’s Asia Cup. She said she has cried herself to sleep and has received a lot of hate on the internet. Limaye pointed out how her team has not played in two years and how a team like Japan reached the Olympics Finals and has been in full practise recently.
With a weak infrastructure and lack of promotion in relation to women’s basketball sports, it is clear India can’t compete with nations like Japan who have had an active basketball plan for women in place for decades. Her comments highlight how these aspects are overlooked and how players are made the target of a poor system nationally.
It's extremely hard to go through all that negativity, fat shaming and cyber bullying. It's demotivating and degrading to see those comments and DMs. People just sit at home and sh*t on me for no apparent reason. They can't do anything themselves and they say cr*p about me on social media. That's just ridiculous and pathetic. I've been facing this ever since I started playing ball. In 2017, before the FIBA Asia Cup it was so bad that people DM'ed me saying that I was obese and too "out of shape" to even touch the ball. I used to cry myself to sleep.
