Punjab Kings’ social media accounts fell uncharacteristically quiet on Sunday, after the team was knocked out of the Indian Premier League’s playoffs race. For perhaps the first time this season, the hyperactive social media team of Punjab did not have anything to say.
From where I come from, in the eastern parts of India, the elders say that if you do not have anything good to say, do not say anything at all. But they are from a different age, from values of a different time. What do they know about social media engagement? And how fan wars are fought over handles that reach millions of people every single day?
Social media has formed a big part of the Punjab Kings’ persona this season. The tongue-in-cheek responses and hyper-aggressive comebacks sit well with the younger audience. Just like they are on the field, Punjab’s social media team is fearless.
But more often than not, that has gone wrong this season. Because at the end of the day, a Twitter handle can’t win you games when the universe decides to check your ego.
Cricket, or any sport, really, is basically a game of circles. Good days turn into bad, bad days turn into good, and even the absolute legends only win a little more than half their battles. Usually, respect in sport is built on a pretty basic secondary requirement: how you behave when you actually win or lose.
If you want a masterclass in how not to do that, you only have to look at how Punjab’s season started to unravel.
Back in the first half of the season when things were rosy, the social media team was practically high on its own supply. Remember that rain-affected game where they shared points with Kolkata Knight Riders? They actually posted a video essentially saying, “Here, take your one point. We are giving it away to you because we have such big hearts.”
It was peak arrogance, but hey, sports thrive on adrenaline. It’s easy to go overboard when you start the season undefeated in seven games. But this is where those eastern elders come back into the picture with their wisdom about circles. They knew exactly how this works, that what goes up must come down, and life has a funny way of leveling things out. As soon as the luck ran out on the field, those exact same edgy tweets came back to bite them. Hard.
Suddenly, the timeline wasn’t full of cheeky banter; it was full of fires they had to put out. It all started because Riyan Parag had already been sanctioned for vaping in the Rajasthan Royals dressing room, which put the whole league on high alert. So, when a video leaked of Yuzvendra Chahal vaping on a flight, rival fans smelled blood in the water. They used it to absolutely hammer Punjab Kings for a massive lapse in basic discipline.
Then came the Arshdeep Singh vlogs. Now, nobody is expecting a young fast bowler to be the ultimate moral compass of the nation, but maybe casual colourism and locker-room bullying shouldn’t be the kind of “content” you push out to millions of kids who look up to you? Just a thought.
Naturally, when your off-field vibe is this chaotic, the cricket is going to notice. The runs dried up for Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya, catches started dropping like hot potatoes, and the whole season nosedived into a beautiful mess.
Now, usually, a normal team sees a tailspin like this and tries to fix the cricket. Punjab decided to fix the blame.
But instead of doing the sensible thing, like, say, telling the players to delete their social media apps, taking their phones away, and getting their heads back into the actual sport, Punjab management decided to go full “us against the world.” They actually convinced themselves they were victims. The narrative became: “Oh, we are finally winning consistently, so everyone is just jealous and out to get us.” It was a victim complex of epic, delusional proportions. Everyone in the camp just sat around patting each other on the back, whispering, “we are good, they are bad.”
Eventually, that internal delusion had to collide with the outside world, and the crash was spectacular. It got so toxic that by the time they reached Dharamsala for the most critical press conference of the season, they didn’t even send a captain or a coach. They sent Andrew Leipus. The head physiotherapist.
Imagine being a journalist who spent your own time and money to travel up to the mountains, only to face a physio who legally and logically cannot answer a single cricketing question. The media was furious, and honestly, can you blame them?
The backlash was such an avalanche that it forced Ricky Ponting, one of the greatest, most famously blunt, straight-talking men in cricket history, to stand there and look journalists dead in the eye with a straight face.
When asked if the social media circus was ruining the team, Ponting claimed he had absolutely no idea what was happening online because he doesn’t have social media.
Look, even if we believe him for a second, it makes you wonder: shouldn’t someone have told him? Shouldn’t someone have tapped one of the fiercest leaders in cricket history on the shoulder and said, “Hey Ricky, maybe we should confiscate the iPads before the season completely tanks?”
What Punjab Kings actually needed to do was just shut out the noise and grind out a performance. Which they did in their very last game, funny enough. But by that time, it was way too late.
Honestly, that eerie silence on Sunday should have happened weeks ago. The management and the coaching staff really should have stepped in and said, “Guys, enough is enough. It’s cricket first, social media later.” But unfortunately, nobody did.
So here we are. 14 matches, 15 points, and about a hundred controversies later, one has to wonder, do Punjab Kings actually think they achieved something this year? Are they really sitting back and feeling proud of the casual colourism, the bullying, and the condescending tweets they threw around all season?
Maybe it’s time to look in the mirror, reflect a bit, and try to do better next year. Both on the field, and definitely off it.
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