Twitter announces its Playing XI of ICC World T20 2016

The 6th edition of the ICC World T20 2016 has already kicked off. The qualifiers which began on March 8th have concluded with Bangladesh and Afghanistan making it through to the Super 10 stage which commences today.

Cricket has a huge presence in the social media space and generates massive enthusiasm from fans. And, when we talk about the social media, Twitter is among the leaders. It gets hyperactive on match days with live feeds and updates coming in from every part of the world. Cricketers make their presence felt to their fans with constant update and enjoy huge popularity. And, with the World T20 beginning properly from today, the excitement seems to be uncontrollable among fans.

So considering these factors, Twitter decided to create its own World T20 XI comprising of cricketers who are most mentioned on Twitter in the past 12 months using the hashtag #WT20.

“This dream team is composed of the most-mentioned #WT20 players on Twitter over the past 12 months, forming a first XI that would be the envy of any coach,” Twitter said in a release.

The Twitter XI features five Indian cricketers including MS Dhoni as the captain and wicketkeeper of the team, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Ravichandran Ashwin and Harbhajan Singh. Other members of the team are West Indies’ Chris Gayle, Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi, Mohammed Hafeez and Wahab Riaz, Australia’s Steve Smith and South Africa’s Dale Steyn. All these players have a great presence on the micro-blogging site.

Interestingly, the team does not feature the likes of Rohit Sharma, David Warner, Glenn Maxwell, AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, and other big names in T20 cricket.

The Twitter dream team of ICC World T20 2016 based on players mentions: Chris Gayle (West Indies), Mohammad Hafeez (Pakistan), Virat Kohli (India), Steven Smith (Australia), Suresh Raina (India), MS Dhoni (c & wk) (India), Ravichandran Ashwin (India), Harbhajan Singh (India), Shahid Afridi (Pakistan), Wahab Riaz, (Pakistan), Dale Steyn (South Africa).