Yuvraj Singh

Rohit Sharma

Calcutta: Tweets by Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma on Sunday, when the third and final ODI against Australia was to have been played in Margao, have stumped the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

“Rained again last night might start might not maybe 20-20 maybe not don’t think will start before 1.”

That was Yuvraj, back to the days of being a limited overs specialist, at 10.58 am.

“Match called off.”

That was Rohit, no longer projected as the next Big Hope, at 12.44 pm, around five minutes before the media was officially informed (by the scorers) of there being no play.

“I don’t follow Twitter. Now that you’ve brought it to my notice, I’ll get it checked,” a top BCCI official told The Telegraph, on Monday.

Another senior official, from another city, said: “I’m surprised... Players shouldn’t be tweeting on match days. This is something which will have to be looked into.”

While Yuvraj’s tweet was general in nature, Rohit had absolutely no business providing ‘breaking news’, so to say, on the ODI being called off, without a ball being bowled, as it turned out.

Twitter, clearly, is new territory for the BCCI. Lalit Kumar Modi is, of course, a serial tweeter, but he’s out of the organisation.

Modi’s tweets on Team Kochi, it may be recalled, landed him in big trouble, six months ago, but he’s never regretted. In fact, the upheavel in the Indian Premier League started with his tweets.

It’s another matter that Modi didn’t set out to be a game-changer in the manner the tweet-script unfolded.

Sporting bodies and teams have, by and large, been reacting in a mixed way to what could be let out on Twitter.

While Cricket Australia allowed coach Tim Nielsen, Test vice-captain and ODI captain Michael Clarke, plus a few of the other players to tweet during their just-ended India tour, the England and Wales Cricket Board has been contemplating a ban.

England’s fear is that some player may end up making “dressing room secrets” public.

To talk of golf, in the recent Ryder Cup, players from both Europe and the US were prohibited from using Twitter (and going on Facebook).

After Ian ‘Cereal Offender’ Poulter’s controversial video on Twitter, though, the Ryder Cup captains could actually extend the scope of such bans.

For now, one awaits the BCCI’s take on players tweeting on match days.