Sanju Samson vs Rajasthan Royals admin: (Trying to) decode the Twitter controversy

The Rajasthan Royals social media team is set for a massive overhaul following the franchise’s decision to fire the iconic admin who ran the page from behind the scenes. The decision comes after RR captain Sanju Samson criticised and unfollowed the team’s social account following the account uploading a morphed image of himself on their Twitter page. 

The commotion started when the official Rajasthan account uploaded an image of Samson with a feminine face-swapping filter. It wasn’t quite the usual top-quality post fans have come to expect out of the Royals social media page in recent times, but it did receive a bunch of likes. 

Sanju Samson offended at Rajasthan Royals’ post; criticises and unfollows the account

The situation, however, escalated real bad when Samson replied to the post, calling out the Rajasthan team for being unprofessional as a team-operated account. A while later, fans realized that Samson had even gone on to unfollow all the official Rajasthan social accounts.

Following Sanju Samson’s unfollowing, there was a long period of awkward inactivity from the RR account interspersed with some promotional posts of their sponsored sports courses. But then on Friday evening, the Rajasthan account released a statement informing fans that all was fine in their camp. The major new development, however, was that the franchise would appoint a new social media team going ahead. 

So does that mean the end of the road for all the hilarious and comical posts from Rajasthan Royals social media pages? Will this change affect their fan-following? We, for one, have no definitive answers; because later in the day, Rajasthan uploaded this video on their page. 

It’s a five minute-long video- if the situation didn’t seem overdone already- but it basically features the RR admin bidding his final adieus to everyone in the Royals’ camp. The video ends with an emotional song and a message, “Thank You for the memories”. At the time of writing, this was the latest post from the RR account.

Fan reactions

Unsurprisingly, everyone following this Rajasthani ruckus has been scratching their heads on what’s going on. Some were quick to support Samson in speaking out against ‘lame and cringe’ posts. Others weren’t too pleased with the fact that Samson decided to make the matter public instead of resolving the situation internally. And to top everything off, the last couple of posts gives the impression that this whole controversy was a cheap façade to rev up the marketing. 

https://twitter.com/AkhilKsm/status/1507358119948599296?s=20&t=9JAHvkotY1G1hRgGu7vjVA

https://twitter.com/Brahman_Kuldip/status/1507391527093354500?s=20&t=9JAHvkotY1G1hRgGu7vjVA

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There were some others who thought that this entire ordeal was a prank from the RR team gone horribly wrong. To that, we just have to things to say: first, it’s still a few days until first April. And second: Didn’t you guys learn anything from Harsha Bhogle last night? 

https://twitter.com/AbdullahNeaz/status/1507393157650026504?s=20&t=9JAHvkotY1G1hRgGu7vjVA