Dozens of heartbroken cricket fans shouted slogans and jeered outside captain Sourav Ganguly's home in Kolkata after India's humiliating loss to Australia on Saturday.
Wild with rage and disappointment, the young men, said to be from a nearby club, assembled in front of Ganguly's Behala residence and began shouting obscenities and demanded that the skipper quit the game.
They also shouted slogans and put garlands of torn slippers around posters of some of the Indian players. Later, the posters were set on fire.
The commotion attracted the attention of the policemen posted at the Indian skipper's residence for security reasons, and soon a posse of policemen arrived and cordoned off the area. The protesters, who the police claimed were drunk, were driven away.
On Sunday morning, anti-riot personnel were posted outside the captain's home. According to police chief of South 24 Pargana district D.K. Ganguly, the cricketer's home is guarded round the clock since it was reported that Kashmiri terrorists could be planning to kidnap him.
Indications of grief and disappointment at India's loss were also visible elsewhere in the city with fans tearing up posters of their favourite players and promising not to watch the rest of India's World Cup matches.
Some dejected fans also held a 'funeral procession' for the Indian team on Sunday, consigning huge posters of the men in blue to fire and meticulously observing their last rites.
In the mock funeral, fans gathered in front of the Eden Gardens and raised slogans calling for the Indian team to return
immediately "to save the country any more embarrassment and shame in world cricket."
"It is better if they come away right now instead of carrying on with their pathetic show. It is a shame for the country," said Amit De, secretary of the Kolkata Youth Forum, which had organised the last rites of the players.
Enraged fans stamped on the posters of their cricket superstars, which they had garlanded and worshipped only two days ago.
The posters were then pasted on bamboo biers. The biers were then carried on shoulders to the nearby Ganges, symbolising the carrying of the corpses of the players. There, the biers were set on fire amid funeral incantations.
"Its shameful that these cricketers take so much from the game and in the name of the country, but can give nothing in return," said Shyamal Dutta, a member of the club as he tore a poster to pieces.
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