When one talks about the 2019 Indian Premier League (IPL), one thing that comes to mind is Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) skipper Ravichandran Ashwin ‘mankading’ England’s Jos Buttler - a move with many polarised opinions.
When one talks about the 2019 Indian Premier League (IPL), one thing that comes to mind is Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) skipper Ravichandran Ashwin ‘mankading’ England’s Jos Buttler - a move with many polarised opinions.
While some defended Ashwin, saying his method was within the laws of the game, many said it's against the spirit of sportsmanship.
However, now with Ashwin's move from KXIP to Delhi Capitals (DC), head coach of his new squad has warned him, making it clear that the franchise has a strict policy against the controversial method of dismissal.
Ricky Ponting, while speaking on The Grade Cricketer Podcast, said that he had spoken to his players soon after Ashwin's dismissal caused an uproar after the Kings XI Punjab-Rajasthan Royals match.
“I’ll be having a chat with him about [mankad], that’s the first thing I’ll do,” Ponting said about Ashwin.
“Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to afford to bring in this year. Look, he’s a terrific bowler, and he’s done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be others around the tournament who’ll think about doing this well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’.”
“So, that’s going to be a conversation and that’s going to be a hard conversation I will have to have with him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll take it on the chin. I think, even him, looking back now, probably he’d say it was within the rules and he’s right to do it, but this is not within the spirit of the game, not in the way I want, at least with the Delhi Capitals anyway.”
After the incident where Ashwin dismissed Rajasthan’ non-striker Buttler - who had walked out of his crease by the time the off-spinner began his bowling action - said that "What I did is what the rules are supposed to be.”
However, Ponting added that he has his own preferred solution for stopping non-strikers gaining an unfair advantage. “I think there are ways that you can actually stop batsmen cheating like that,” he said. “If the bowler was to stop, and the batsman was a foot out of his crease for instance, why don’t you just penalise him some runs or something? Then they won’t do it again.
“You’ve only got to do that once at the start of a tournament, and then all the players see it, and you can guarantee the players won’t be fudging any ground from then on. I chatted to some of the match referees about it during last year’s IPL as well. If the umpires make a stance and do something to warn the batsman that they might be cheating, then that’s better than having the ugly incident of a mankad.”
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