Ashwin falls to his own 'doosra'

A social media promotion that ignited a war of words between one former cricketer and one still playing the sport.

Ravichandran Ashwin was clearly not in a jocular mood.

R. Ashwin and Herschelle Gibbs got into an uncomfortable exchange on Twitter after the former South African opener replied to Ashwin's promotional tweet for Nike.

"Hey Guys! Just got my hands on the new NIKE React..." went Ashwin's initial tweet, along with an embedded video of the product.

Gibbs soon came up with a wisecrack: "Hopefully you will be able to run a bit faster now ashwin". And this supposedly light-hearted reply didn't go down well with the Tamil Nadu off-spinner, who sent an instant reply.

"Surely not as fast as you did mate, unfortunately I wasn't blessed as you were. But I was blessed with a wonderfully ethical mind not to fix games which put food on my plate," citing Gibbs' involvement in the match-fixing scandal along with Hansie Cronje, Nicky Boje, among others.

Caught off-guard, Gibbs tweeted again, saying the India off-spinner couldn't take a 'joke'.  Ashwin tried his best to soften things up, but the damage was already done. 

A low down of how the conversation went on this social media platform:

 

With the issue snowballing into an unnecessary controversy, Ashwin deleted the post and gave out a clarification: