British Airways trolled on Twitter for not recognizing famous Indian cricket player

When British Airways’ customer service team sent out a routine response to a customer complaint on Twitter this morning, they unwittingly stirred up a Twitter storm.

That’s because the customer on the other end was none other than Sachin Tendulkar, arguably the best batsman cricket has ever seen and a household name in the cricket-playing world. The cricketer tweeted about his bad experience with the airline, complaining that his luggage had gone missing and that a family member couldn’t get on a flight as expected.

Unfortunately for British Airways, Tendulkar has an ardent following, with 1.2 billion cricket-obsessed Indians. So when the airline asked him for his full name, it didn’t fly with his 8.4million plus Twitter followers, who were quick to jump in on the conversation and troll the airline.

According to Topsy, the hashtag #BritishAirways raked in over 3,200 tweets in just nine hours while #SachinTendulkar gathered over 600 tweets in six hours. In fact, soon enough after Tendulkar’s tweets, #NeveronBA was trending in India.

Seems like British Airways isn’t the only brand unaware of Tendulkar’s massive fandom. Last year, tennis superstar Maria Sharapova also faced the wrath of Tendulkar fans when she admitted she had no idea who he was. Within hours, “Who is Maria Sharapova” was a top trending topic on Twitter. Some fans didn’t hesitate to poke fun at that again.

Now that Tendulkar has acknowledged British Airways’ response, things should be settling down soon.

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