Tweeting from the wicket

Published August 5, 2009

Imran Yusuf laments the glorious sound of leather on willow being drowned out by the tones of tweeting.

Let me go for it at the start, Imran Naziresque, on the attack from word go: I hate Twitter. I hate the word, its squeaky sound, its babyish look. I hate the very sight of it. I see the word and I feel the blood rise. And I hear sounds, loud sounds, discordant and screechy: the uninteresting blabber of an uninterested generation. Twitter is a warning, a cheap, chirpy high-pitched alarm, showing us the future in all its apathy and incoherence, its numb sensitivity, its artificial joy.

An Imran Nazir innings would usually be over in the time it takes to read the above paragraph, so I'll stop my blasting and now return to more conventional cricket blogging. Cricket and Twitter were in the news together last week, with Australia's Phillip Hughes revealing the confidential team news that he'd been dropped before it had been officially announced. It turns out that several other cricketers are tweeting away too: England's Jimmy Anderson and Graham Swann are having a friendly contest about who can get the most followers. Everyone seems to be at it, from the hip, young gun-slingers to the merry old men of the game.

I'll try to leave aside my bias for a moment to look at this rationally. What is the purpose of a Cricket-Twitter union? As the Hughes incident shows, players can't use the site to reveal team news. That rules out inside gossip and exclusives. Also, in interviews and press conferences, players virtually never show great insight into their sport, relying mostly on clichés and already known facts. And even if the players did have something valuable to add, it's unlikely they'd delve too deep into the eternal mysteries of the game in a mere 140 characters.

Cricket is lucky to be the sport probably best served by literature. Its history also includes some of the great sports commentators of all time. Players should play, which is what they're good at, and leave the talking and writing to others.

But what of older cricket men, those in possession of a fine turn of phrase whose very job it is to reflect on the game? I have loved David Lloyd ever since I first heard his voice. His digressions, often illuminating and original, whether he's talking about local food or girls in the crowd, are best served accompanied by his vibrant Lancastrian accent, not written down in text-speak as in his Twitter posts. His banter about escapades with fellow Sky Sports commentators, such as Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain and Ian Botham, is like a bad, embarrassing, old-man version of Entourage, a television show about young men in Hollywood, which is already bad and embarrassing.

Then again, perhaps Twitter belongs in the modern game. Why rage against the inevitable? In many ways, it is an ideal medium for the the overpaid, undercommitted modern cricketer. It is emblematic of a generation who believe it is worthy of public broadcast that they are feeling a bit down this Tuesday morning because of their cushy job, or that they are in a good mood because Starbucks is selling its favourite Frappuccino, or they want to make you LOL with an oh-so-witty comment.

In an age when the young cricketer can barely play an innings longer than 10 overs - and some of them have at least been honest enough to admit they don't even want to - Twitter is the perfect mode of communication. We are the ADD generation – minimal work, maximum pay. It's evolution. It's short and snappy and it makes me happy. It's entertaining, and people love it.

So as you can tell, I am no big fan of Twitter, and I'm glad no Pakistani player has signed up so far (and so far as I know – I have long suspected that Younus Khan fancies himself as something of a comic genius and he might be tweeting under a pseudonym). Twitter is boring and self-indulgent and, because it is available to anyone, makes anyone think they deserve a platform to air their views, however derivative and dull, however uninformed and unformed. (A bit like blogging, one might say, though for obvious reasons I won't.)

It's like the old saying that everyone has a novel in them. For most people, that's where it should stay – inside.

Imran Yusuf lives in Karachi. He compulsively follows Pakistan cricket, which drives him mad. He also writes about Pakistan cricket, which keeps him sane.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

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