Tweeting @GraemeSmith49, a lesson in etiquette

This is going to sound like a ridiculously hypocritical post and it probably is to an extent but for once I actually feel sorry for the SA skipper .

Twitter and social media in general is a public domain (unless, of course, you protect your Tweets). ORM for oneself is as important as it is for business and we have to think before we Tweet in order to prevent looking like fools when it all comes out or when somebody stumbles across something we said.

I’ve given Kevin Pietersen a fair bit of a hard time, no more than I would do to him face-to-face but we all know how that ended up, he blocked me on Twitter and deservedly so.

On Friday night a Tweet form a South African fan to Graeme Smith was Retweeted by the Saffa skip for all the world to see. Fortunately for the Tweeter most people have a life and their Friday nights are mostly spent getting drunk or doing social things of sort.

The Tweet read as follows: @GraemeSmith49 You prick. Big joke when you cock up. Very funny. You are the problem, step down and let Botha do the job.

I’ve elected to not disclose who this Tweeter is but I’m sure most of you saw it/can use your common sense to find it.

I’ve never had much love for Smithers and while I tend to fire the insults at the television screen and around my mates I’m quite selective about what I write about him and what I Tweet to him. It’s a respect thing. I’ve drawn conclusions and made assumptions about the kind of person I’d imagine Smith to be and, to be honest, I’ve decided, without ever meeting him, that I probably won’t like him.

I respect him tremendously as a player and, in my opinion, he is one of the most successful Test captains South Africa has ever had and he is the player I’ve watch grow the most since his tenure at the helm of the South African cricket team began. Add to that the fact that the is also a massively talented cricketer and there is no reason why he doesn’t deserve respect. That doesn’t mean I have to like him.

Smith has a tough job. Not only does he have to motivate, captain and inspire a team that seems to be lacking that killer instinct but he also has to captain a team that’s lathered with issues stemming from politics. It’s not a pretty landscape and it’s not a job that anyboby wants, nevermind a job that people would be good at.

Yes, South Africa tend to choke (yawn) yes, we don’t have that oomph that other international nations seem to have, yes, there are issues and yes, there is perhaps a clique but is it a job you want or even a job you’d be good at? I highly doubt it.

Smith has made his mistakes but he has more than made up for them in the past few years. Yes, we get annoyed when he laughs when we are losing under stupid circumstances but that’s just the way some people deal with it. I was about 13 when I broke my arm and I laughed about it. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt, it was just that I didn’t know what else to do. When I was hijacked in a driveway and had somebody stick a gun in my side, I laugh when the crooks drove off because that’s the way I deal with things.

I’ve said some very nasty things about Smith’s laughing attitude in the past but I think that it’s simply the way he deals with it.

Personally I am not a fan of the whole ‘we must get behind the team and support them no matter what’ attitude.  I’m quite a opinionated and probably one of the biggest Protea bashers around but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my team and it doesn’t mean that I don’t respect them and that I don’t understand how hard they do work.

Arm chair critic syndrome can be fatal and maybe, just maybe, it is time we cut the South African skip some slack. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll “surprise” the haters and bring back a nice trophy from India in 2011….