After a string of controversies in recent weeks, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has now vowed to get tough with players who “overstep the mark” on micro-blogging site Twitter.
ECB managing director Hugh Morris said that officials were drawing up rules aimed at preventing a repeat of the kind of incidents that landed Kevin Pietersen and Dimitri Mascarenhas in trouble.
“Twitter is potentially a really good medium for players to get closer to supporters, fans of the England team, people who look at them as role models, but with that freedom of speech comes responsibility and it needs to be used in that way,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Morris, as saying.
“Those two players in particular overstepped the mark and they’ve been punished for it,” he added. Pietersen was fined an undisclosed sum after posting a tirade on Twitter in response to his omission from England’s ODI squad for the five-match series against Pakistan, while Mascarenhas was ordered to pay 1,000 pounds for lambasting national selector Geoff Miller on the site.
Morris further said that the rules would be in place before the England team departs for the Ashes tour of Australia. “That will be part of our player contracts going forward.
We’ve had some good discussions with the players’ representatives over this over the last few weeks and that’s exactly the type of way we will look to manage Twitter and other social networking sites going forward,” Morris said.
“The specific wording is yet to be agreed between ourselves and the PCA (Professional Cricketers’ Association), but certainly there will be some management around the use of Twitter,” he added.