Phil Hughes performed a cricketing first today. He was the first Test cricketer to ever announce he had been dropped on Twitter before the Australian team had announced he was. Let us all stand and applaud this achievement from the young man.
The opening batsman, aka @PH408, “tweeted”:
Disappointed not to be on the field with the lads today. Will be supporting the guys, it’s a BIG test match 4 us. Thanks 4 all the support.
The Australian team was livid that their selection was released on a micro-blogging social platform before the toss.
Cricket Australia finally found out how Generation Y likes to roll — twittering while they are XBoxing and parkouring. Well that is what the story sounds like on the face of it. The truth is far from that.
Hughes’ manager Neil D’Costa has taken blame for the tweet. “How our situation works is we get the Twitter from Phillip and I feed them into our IT guy. I spoke to Cricket Australia; they are very supportive of what players do on and off the field. They know this was an innocent situation.”
That seems like the most convoluted way of twittering.
Neil, buy the dude a blackberry or iPhone. If you need three people to put up a tweet, you probably don’t need to be doing it.
In 24 days Phil, Neil and the IT guy have tweeted 13 times. I must admit I was one of the 1200 followers before the announcement (over 4000 now), and before this Phil had tweeted absolutely nothing of note, except for “Need to dig deep today.”
Cricket Australia have reportedly already taken Phil over their knee.
They are probably not happy that they aren’t one of the three people who see Phil’s tweets before they get posted. CA spokesman Philip Pope said. “As a young player he will be reminded that he should not be revealing details until the team has been officially announced.”
To be fair Phil was probably as shocked as the rest of us that he had been dropped for Shane Watson.
*Listen to or download the latest Crikey Sports podcast where Leigh Josey and Jarrod Kimber dwell on Twitter, Phil Hughes and Edgbaston.
CA, get with it. This is tame compared with Shane’s peccadilloes with SMS.
Agreed. CA need to join the 20th century.
So, if i’m sacked, I have to wait for my employer to announce it first? Give me a break. Its not like he said anything defamatory. He was just a little shocked, and didn’t think about protocol.
Sorry, what’s this got to do with “Generation Y”? Particularly when Twitter users are an older demographic than most social platforms?
But yes, Cricket Australia proves itself a bunch of out-of-touch control freaks. Again. What they should be livid about is their own inability to transmit information to their fans — you know, the people who support the game — promptly. Gawd, they’re outpaced by some three-person tweet-by-committee that can only generate 13 tweets in 24 days?
I’m wondering how I get a job as a Test Cricketer’s IT guy. Sounds pretty sweet.