MS Dhoni, former India captain and key member of Rising Pune Supergiant, led the chart of the most-mentioned player emojis on Twitter during the tenth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
He was followed by Virat Kohli, Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina.
IPL and Twitter had come out with emojis of 30 IPL cricketers at the beginning of the league .
When users tweeted using the designated player hashtag (such as #MSDhoni or #ViratKohli), an emoji version of that player automatically appeared after the hashtag within the tweet.
Quoting Aneesh Madani, Head of Sports Partnerships (India and South East Asia) of Twitter, a press release said here that the players’ Twitter emojis were a global first for cricket.
Apart from emojis, the hashtag #MSDhoni also found a place among the top five hashtags of IPL 10. The top five hashtags were: #CricketMeriJaan by Mumbai Indians, #IPLFinal, #AmiKKR by Kolkata Knight Riders, #MSDhoni, and #MI.
While the IPL champions Mumbai Indians led the chart of the most-mentioned teams on Twitter, Kolkata Knight Riders was the second most-mentioned team. Royal Challengers Bangalore, Rising Pune Supergiant, and SunRisers Hyderabad followed them.
The hashtag of the final match between Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiant (#rpsvmi) topped the list of most-mentioned matches by hashtags.
The other hashtags were the qualifier between Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders (#mivkkr) and the eliminator match between SunRisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders (#srhvkkr).