Hughes reprimanded for leak, agent owns up responsibility

LONDON - Young Phillip Hughes faced the wrath of the Australian team management after revealing prematurely on the social networking site Twitter that he had been dropped for the third Test of the ongoing Ashes series at Edgbaston.

Teams are not obliged to reveal their line-ups before the toss, but a message appeared on Hughes’s Twitter page on the morning of the Test, Thursday, stating he had been dropped.

“Disappointed not to be on the field with the lads today,” read the message. “Will be supporting the guys, it’s a BIG test match 4 us. Thanks 4 all the support.”

Hughes’s agent, Neil D’Costa, attempted to take the blame for the mistake, claiming that he was responsible for posting the player’s tweets, but Cricket Australia’s (CA) Philip Pope suggested Hughes would still be held accountable.

“As a young player he will be reminded that he should not be revealing details until the team has been officially announced,” Pope was quoted as saying in the Guardian.

Earlier D’Costa, who is in India, had blamed the premature tweet on his own miscalculation of the time difference.

“I look after the Twitter for Phillip and we were certainly under the impression (the timing was ok) because of the time change,” D’Costa told Sky Sports News. “I’m in India and I was dealing with all the stuff through Australia. Unfortunately, I am probably the fool in this situation.

“How our situation works is we get the Twitter from Phillip and I feed them into our IT guy. I don’t think there was that much of a secret. The team were looking to make some changes to suit the conditions so I don’t think there was anything that was too big a surprise.

“I spoke to CA, they are very supportive of what players do on and off the field. They know this was an innocent situation.”

However, CA were keen to draw a line under the situation. “The information on Twitter was clearly a mishap, I have spoken to the guy who put it up,” another spokesman, Peter Young, said.

“He was very apologetic and agreed to take it down. Phil Hughes was not aware it had gone up on his behalf. We encourage players to engage with the public and use those channels but within the process and not before selectors have officially published the team.”

Hughes has been replaced by the Queensland all-rounder Shane Watson.