With the novel coronavirus, Covid-19, forcing a worldwide shutdown in activity, cricketers are trying to find new ways to keep themselves busy.

For Andile Phehlukwayo and some of his South Africa teammates, it appears as though that pass time is the FIFA video game series.

Or maybe it isn’t much of a pass time after all. At least Phehlukwayo’s open challenge to his teammates on Twitter seems to suggest that he’s taking this way too seriously.

In a tweet that was the source of no little mirth to some of his South Africa teammates, Phehlukwayo issued an open challenge to anyone interested in playing the game to either do or die, throwing out a 21-day ultimatum to make some progress.

“Whoever is bad at fifa – rather just quit after this if you don’t see any progress; because you have 21 days to improve your game,” he wrote, Cc’ing Tabraiz Shamsi, Temba Bavuma and Kagiso Rabada.

But if you thought Phehlukwayo was setting some sort of a standard for his mates to aspire to, apparently that’s not quite the case.

His tweet had teammates in splits. While Shamsi went out of the way to remind Phehlukwayo of the time he walked out of the room after receiving a battering in New Zealand, Bavuma mockingly asked if this was supposed to be a challenge.

“Listen to this guy boys… from what I can remember, the last time I played FIFA against you was in New Zealand and you walked out of the room because you were 4-0 down at halftime,” Shamsi wrote, before following up with, “the worst FIFA player in the team telling everyone else to practice”, and “even my two-week old son will beat you in FIFA.”

From the replies the tweet had garnered at the time of writing, Rabada seemed to be absent from the conversation. But as an in-your-face bowler, his actions have always been louder than his words, so let’s just wait and see.

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South Africa Andile Phehlukwayo