A charming tale, covered gleefully by the media, revealing the ever-integrating world of today.
The setting: a street-cricket “tape ball” match somewhere in Sindh. The scene: a ball managed to, after a set of detours, (see the video) find its way to the wicket.
This is the bit of information that was made available to us from the cell-phone video of the play. We can only guess, knowing what we know about street cricket, that the batsman would have contested his being bowled out. The other side would have protested. Tempers would have raged. And we also know that things spilling over into violence and old friendships ending is no rare occurrence when it comes to cricketing disputes.
So, one proactive and enterprising young man, about whom the only detail we have gleaned is his name (Hamza), decided to go to higher authorities to adjudicate.
No, not some village elder who had played club cricket back in the day, but to go online. But no, not tweet at the twitter account of some cricket journalist. Or even the PCB, but the ICC itself!
Credit to the ICC here, that they replied!
“A fan named Hamza sent this video to us this morning asking for a ruling,” the ICC tweeted Tuesday night. “Unfortunately for the (very unlucky) batsman, law 32.1 confirmed this is…. Out!”
The response of the ICC went viral, reaching all those corners of the cricketing world that were online.
It was a heartwarming tale of international appeal. But more than that, it encapsulates the true extent to which the rules of the game have been rewritten. Social media is interactive. The immediacy and involvement of social media is something traditional, mainstream media cannot possibly compete with.
The sheer interactivity of the episode points us to the other side of the internet and social media. Often – correctly – called out for being a swirling vortex of fake news and misinformation, which has the potential to destroy democracies and even lead to riots, social media also connects us in a way no one would have thought possible. Indian fans of Sachin Tendulkar are in a bittersweet delight when their online criticism of the great cricketing icon is run to the ground – quite viciously – by his Pakistani fans.
Similarly, in the comments of the aforementioned Facebook post by the ICC, Indian Facebook user Rishabh Yadav writes, “What lovely gesture from Icc. The spirit of street level cricket should carry on. And even ball knows I have to swing to wickets , I am thrown by a Pakistani bowler.”
What a wonderful world.
