Virat Kohli’s legion of Twitter fans have learned an important lesson: be careful what you wish for.

On Saturday, amid mounting pressure over technical issues, the cricket website was forced to reopen an online poll between Chris Gayle and Kohli at the quarter-final stage of a bracket vote to find the greatest T20 player of all time.

Gayle had recorded a small victory originally, securing just 50.02 per cent of the vote, but with a glitch showing Kohli in the lead as the poll closed, a section of the organisation’s Twitter following was incensed, and with the hashtag #ShameOnESPNcricinfo trending, the poll was reopened for an extra 36 hours.

However, while Kohli’s fans had initially got their way, the move backfired with Gayle hoovering up an eventual 75.65 per cent of the 2,140,551 votes cast and progressing emphatically to the next round.