Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) won their first IPL title in 18 years, thus ending the long wait of fans. After this momentous occasion, RCB planned a special celebration in Bengaluru with their fans on Wednesday, June 4. However, the celebrations turned fatal, as a stampede near Gate 2 of the M Chinnaswamy Stadium resulted in the death of 11 people, while several were injured. Member of the 1983 World Cup winning team Syed Kirmani slammed RCB for this tragic incident.

In an interaction with India Today, Syed Kirmani termed the stampede as a 'deadly welcome for the IPL 2025 winners. He also opined that RCB could have waited a bit longer to organize a felicitation for the players.

"My condolences to the bereaved families. This was a deadly welcome to the IPL champions. In our times, there was no such media hype and there was no TV and there was no such thing which could lead to such things," Kirmani said.

"On that count, I suppose if RCB waited for 17 (18) years to become champions and organisers, whosoever it may be, could have waited for a while for things to settle down and then organise a show to felicitate these great heroes of RCB," he added.

Syed Kirmani also went on to criticize the fan culture of the modern generation. He termed fans as crazy, especially in the IPL. He pointed out that earlier the craziness of the fans was not as much as was visible on June 4.

"The fans of our times were not as crazy as fans of today, and especially in the IPL, the crazy fans are unimaginable, particularly as you could see lakhs and lakhs were around just to get a glimpse of these great heroes," he added.

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