New Delhi, March 27
With the cricket world split into two groups, pro-Ashwin and anti-Ashwin, over his Mankad dismissal of Jos Buttler, former India captain Rahul Dravid has spoken with clarity and a sense of balance. He has said it was wrong to question Ravichandran Ashwin’s character on the basis of him running out Buttler for leaving the crease too early during an IPL match.
“I think some of the reactions were overblown. Questioning Ashwin’s character because he did that is totally wrong. He has every right to his view,” Dravid said in a newspaper interview.
“You might not agree with it, but it was well within his rights to do it and that does not make him a bad person. Like I said, I would rather he had warned first, but if he chose not to do it, then that’s his interpretation and you can’t have an issue with that,” Dravid said.
Cricket’s rules, in fact, state that a bowler is not bound to warn a non-striker before running him out for leaving his crease before the ball is bowled. A statement issued by the Marylebone Cricket Club yesterday stated: “To clarify, it has never been in the laws that a warning should be given to the non-striker and nor is it against the spirit of cricket to run out a non-striker who is seeking to gain an advantage by leaving his/her ground early.”
Dravid said Ashwin is not a cheat. “It is not about being a gentleman or a non-gentleman. This is not a judgement on his character, but his reading of the law. He has not cheated anybody, nor is he a bad person because he did that,” he added.
What Bradman thought
The original Mankad dismissal happened in 1947, when Vinoo Mankad ran out Bill Brown for backing up too far. The captain of the Aussie team then, Don Bradman, did not see anything wrong in Mankad’s action. In Farewell to Cricket, Bradman wrote: “For the life of me, I can’t understand why [the press] questioned his sportsmanship. The laws of cricket make it quite clear that the non-striker must keep within his ground until the ball has been delivered. If not, why is the provision there which enables the bowler to run him out? By backing up too far or too early, the non-striker is very obviously gaining an unfair advantage.”
— Agencies
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2uynamY
via Today’s News Headlines
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