A controversy started during the Ranji Trophy match between Karnataka and Baroda on Thursday at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. This happened after the on-air commentator stated that ‘every Indian should know Hindi as it is our mother tongue.’

The incident took place in the seventh over of Baroda’s second innings when one of the two commentators began saying: ‘I liked the fact that Sunil Gavaskar is commentating in Hindi and is giving his valuable in the same language. I also loved it that he called the dot ball as a ‘bindi’ ball.”

To which the other commentator Sushil Doshi said: “Every Indian must know Hindi. This is our mother tongue. There is no bigger language than this. In fact, I look at those people with a lot of anger who say that we are cricketers still we should talk in Hindi? You are staying in India then you will obviously speak its mother tongue.”

This comment spread like wildfire on social media as fans took offense to the ‘Hindi is our mother tongue’ comment. The 2011 Census data on languages also reveals that while Hindi is the most widely spoken language in the country, almost six in every 10 people, or 56.37% of the citizens, do not identify it as their first language or mother tongue.