MUMBAI: It’s just the start of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 and it has gone from bad to worse for the Pakistan cricket team. Almost everything has gone against them starting from key players being banned from international cricket to losing two critical matches in the start of the tournament against India and West Indies that have brought them to the bottom of the Pool B Points Table. To add to this, they are now hit by fresh scandals like the fake retirement announcement of Younis Khan and their chief selector– Moin Khan doing the rounds of casinos post his team losing the match.

TO THE NEW Digital, a digital services company carried out a detailed social media research on how these events have led to a total let down of the Pakistan cricket team in the eyes of their fans. The report analysed more than 105,648 mentions on various social channels like blogs, forums, news and Twitter and found a net negative sentiment of – 62 per cent against the team.

The Pakistan’s Team Report Card clearly labels captain Misbah-ul-Haq for his bad decisions in both the matches and Sohail Khan for his bad bowling performance against West Indies as the top villains with a net negative sentiment of – 56 per cent and – 55 per cent respectively. The next on the card, are the undesired ones for Pakistan who have now aged a bit to fit into the team – Younis Khan with a negative sentiment of – 47 per cent and Shahid Afridi with a negative sentiment of – 43 per cent.

Amongst the lineup of events that have pushed Pakistan to further criticism, Younis Khan’s fake news of retirement after the Cricket World Cup 2015 received the most negative mentions with a net negative sentiment of – 86 per cent and Moin Khan’s casino visit received 18,500 mentions across social media channels with a net negative sentiment of - 65 per cent. The onus now lies with the Pakistan team to turn the tables with their performance in the upcoming fixture against Zimbabwe on 1 March, 2015. 

TO THE NEW Digital CEO Deepak Mittal said, “Social media sentiments are true reflection of how the audience reacts offline. Sentiment analysis on various social channels can help not only the national teams in Cricket World Cup to analyze the mood of their fans but the scope will also expand to events like IPL and EPL. This would definitely help clubs in these leagues to strategize their social positioning by identifying their true fan base, analyzing the kind of social media buzz that leads to positive and negative sentiments across their follower base.”