London: The Board of Control for Cricket in India tweeted images of the Indian team enjoying some quality time away from the nets before their 2019 World Cup campaign starts. The pictures were posted with a caption, "Snapshots from #TeamIndia's fun day out in the woods (sic.)"
Immediately, there were hundreds of responses and most of them were from fans raising their concern over why the team was not spending time in the nets.
While some of the users simply asked, "Practice kaun karega? (who will practice)" others were a bit more colourful with their criticism of how the players were spending their time in England.
A user attempted to remind them that they were there to play a World Cup and not to "enjoy picnic". One even said that it was okay if India did not win the World Cup but warned against losing any match to Pakistan.
There were similar responses to the players' individual posts, as well. Hardik Pandya in particular posted an image of the day on Instagram with the caption, "Real life PUBG." Replies to his post were mostly around fans wondering why he cropped out Jasprit Bumrah from the picture.
It was not all brickbats though, with several responses to the critics stating that the team needs the downtime and that focussing too much on practice might put more pressure on the players.
India will be facing South Africa in their opening game of the tournament on June 5. South Africa have already played one game - the tournament opener against hosts England - and they lost that match by 104 runs.