UP Police's creative use of Virat-Gambhir spat goes viral on Twitter

Following the viral Virat-Gambhir spat during the IPL match between Lucknow Super Giants and Royal Challengers Bangalore on Monday, the UP Police decided to use it as creative fuel for its awareness campaigns and it has spread like wildfire among Twitter users.

The UP Police campaign was aimed at creating awareness about its emergency services 'Dial 112' and has become massively popular with people. It garnered the maximum number of views among all the tweets to be posted from the handle till date.

“No matter is ‘Virat’ (big) and ‘Gambhir’ (serious) for us. For any emergency situation, dial 112,” UP Police said Tuesday in a tweet in Hindi, clocking 1.5 million views and around 44,000 likes. The state police also posted a snapshot of the on-field altercation with the tweet.



In another tweet with the same context, UP Police posted from its official Twitter handle @Uppolice, “Refrain from arguments, not from calling us. Dial 112 in case of any emergency.” The state police has been on a spree posting similar tweets on matters of public interest.

On May 1, it tweeted, “Calling for strategic timeout on loudspeakers. Don’t let your speakers blast cheers for favourite teams after 10 pm. Keep the sporting spirit and volumes under control,” with the hashtag #NoHallaInOurmohalla.

The face-off between Kohli and Gambhir took place Monday night during an Indian Premier League (IPL) match here between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Lucknow Super Giants.

Kohli, one of RCB’s batting mainstays, and Gambhir, the LSG mentor, were seen having a heated argument after the Bengaluru-based team won the match by 18 runs.

Both the teams were fined 100 per cent of their match fees for breaching Article 2.21 of the IPL code of conduct, which relates to public acts of misconduct, unruly public behaviour and inappropriate comments that are detrimental to the interest of the game. UP Police has 2.9 million followers on Twitter.

(With inputs from PTI)