The most Twitter-savvy team to feature in the upcoming ICC World Cup is South Africa.
An inspection of the Twitter following of the players from the squads announced for the eight test-playing nations in the ICC World Cup 2015 reveals 12 of the 15 players in the Proteas squad having verified Twitter accounts.
Australia and England (11 players each) come second, while India share the third place with New Zealand (eight players each). Six West Indian players have verified accounts while Pakistan and Sri Lanka have three each.
India however leads all other teams in terms of Twitter following. Â The combined follower base for the Indian players with verified Twitter accounts is almost equal to that of the verified users from all other teams put together.
The squad for each team comprises 15 players, making a total of 120 players for the eight teams. Of these, 62 players (51 % of the total) have verified Twitter accounts.
Eight players have a fan following of 1 million or more.
Four of these players are Indians – Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma.
The other four, in decreasing order of number of followers, are Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Dale Steyn and Michael ClarkeÂ