Simply Inexplicable

The Afro Asia Cup has begun. With a large number of top notch players deciding to drop out of the tournament, interest in the tournament has come down to such an extent that Nimbus refused to telecast the tournament. There’s probably one thing which deserved more attention.

In the Pro20 International between the men’s teams, a huge but slightly inconspicuous error took place. In fact, it was two errors in one ball. Sreesanth was the bowler and Thandi Tshabalala the batter. Tshabalala moved outside leg stump in an effort to give himself room. Sreesanth followed him and went between an almost straight bat and the pads of Tshabalala for a couple without any contact to anything. Then the chaos began. The umpire first signalled wide which in itself was an absolute shock! He also went on to signal byes. Just when there was hope that it was a lapse of concentration, he signalled wide and byes again to another scorer.

The question that automatically comes to ones mind is as to what could have happened to result in this blunder of sorts. Either it is – hopefully – a minor lapse of concentration which in itself just cannot be forgiven in the case of umpires or the more dangerous option of insufficient knowledge of the laws and prima facie that’s the way it looks. How it was let off so easily by the commentators and the crowd is a different but intriguing question.

Either way, this is a big blow to world umpiring, the reputation of Indian umpires and more specifically the career of Vinayak Kulkarni. I suppose that in this issue some questions will be left unanswered – to the public at least.-BS

The series Cricket Today will be continued subsequently.