cricket with balls

We’re going to play a game here.

I need you to imagine you’re a fading international cricketer.  Internationally you never really made it.  You have some fans, but in the end you couldn’t cut it at the top of the game.

You had your moments though, and you aren’t some no one cricketer. People know your name and cricket fans would notice you in a pub.

The body is giving up, and other than T20 games, cricket might be passing you by.

You’ve even started commentating when you are county or IPLing, and you like it.

People say you have a flair for it, but deep down you know you aren’t quite good enough to be an automatic commentator when the next generation of English players come into the box.

In the short term, you just need a reason to keep your name in the limelight.

You’ve only just entered twitter, and you only have a few followers, mostly because a more famous mate tweeted your name.

You can’t keep relying on that, so you need to get your own press.

Being that you are no where near being selected, and your age combined with the new selection policy means that you might never be again, why not stir up a bit of controversy.

Knowing that there is an international side in the news every 28 seconds, and the biggest drawcard in the national team is fresh off a media storm, you know that by creating some shit you’ll get some news, without 100% nasty overage because others are busy.

So after a few drinks on a saturday night you type into twitter a dig at the chairman of selectors, calling him a prick. Deep down you know that he is not the most liked person in cricket, and that even if people think you are a dick for tweeting something, they won’t mind that you called him a prick.

You then go to bed and expect to wake up to some shit about how you over stepped the mark.

When you wake up you realise that your tweet has garnered very little attention, people didn’t even know which chairman of selectors you were abusing.

You then name him, and call him a prick and a knob, and you do it at a time when many of your followers are on Twitter.

Once you see a few people retweet it, and a bigger reaction, you delete both tweets and wait for the outrage and free press.

And it isn’t just the first storm that you get free press, you’ll get more later when someone else does a twitter fuck up.

Would you do it?

I’m not saying Dimi Mascarenhas actually did all this, but why wouldn’t he?

KP obviously was sending a private message (and he isn’t the only cricketer to put one public), Azeem Rafiq is a hot headed kid, Tim Bresnan was reacting to being called fat and Phil Hughes’ agent’s computer guy made a mistake.

Dimi’s situation is much different. He tweeted on two separate occasions.  His first tweet was vague, his second was on the money. Dimi is not an idiot, whether commentating or captaining, he shows some brains, so why shouldn’t we speculate that his tweets were not mere angry responses to Mr Miller’s rudeness.

£1,000 is not too much to pay for all the press he has received, and any suspension would mean very little considering he has only played one game for Hampshire for the entire year.

Now look at one line of his apology.

“This was a silly, late-night conversation that got out of control and doesn’t reflect my true views on Mr. Miller.”

The second tweet was put up at around 11 am on sunday morning.  That is one hell of silly late nighter.

I’m not saying Dimi did this on purpose, only he will know that.

I’m saying that if he did he is a fucken evil genius, and if he didn’t I still think this all worked out for the best.

In the future I think we will see a few strategic twitter “foul-mouthed rants”.

I hope.