Guwahati: Bangladesh cricket captain Shakib Al Hasan did the most unthinkable act on Monday afternoon at the Feroz Shah Kotla Ground in New Delhi.
He became the dubious personality to have dismissed a batsman (Angelo Mathews) timed out for the first time in international cricketing history.
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Bangladesh was playing Sri Lanka in an ICC 50-over World Cup match on Monday when the incident happened in the 24th over of the first innings.
Captains should lead by example and we have many great captains who have led by example in the field but this act of Shakib will go a long way to haunt Bangladesh cricket in the future.
This is absolutely not the right example to set for the future generation of Bangladesh cricketers, who would like to emulate the all-rounder in the future.
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Bangladesh went on to win the contest against Sri Lanka and in the presentation ceremony, Shakib said “I felt like I was at war. Whatever I had to do, I did it. There will be debates. Today that (the time out) helped, I won’t deny that!”
Why would a captain restore to such tactics to dismiss a fellow Asian counterpart? Only one answer could come to my mind that he was desperate and on another day maybe he would not have done that.
There will be lots of debates that will occur in the coming days regarding this bizarre dismissal and questions will also be pointed to the rule that ICC still has that a batsman can be given “timed out” if he/she is not ready to face the delivery within two minutes of the prior batsman’s dismissal.
This rule itself doesn’t make much sense in today’s era as we have hardly witnessed anyone willingly delaying coming to the crease to take the strike as a new batsman.
The fact that what Shakib did was wrong ethically can be seen with the on-field umpires Marais Erasmus and Richard Illingworth, reconfirming twice with the Bangladesh captain whether he still wants to go ahead with the appeal or he wants to take it back.
Shakib insisted both the time that he wanted to go ahead with the appeal and the umpires had no other option but to declare Angelo out.
The rest as they say has now become history. But now we need to see how this kind of un-sportsmanship act is going to take Bangladesh cricket forward or it will be the beginning of a new low.
What MCC rule say?
“After the fall of a wicket or the retirement of a batter, the incoming batter must, unless Time has been called, be ready to receive the ball, or for the other batter to be ready to receive the next ball within 3 minutes of the dismissal or retirement. If this requirement is not met, the incoming batter will be out, Timed out,” according to the rule by MCC.
However, as per rule 40.1.2, In the event of an extended delay in which no batter comes to the wicket, the umpires shall adopt the procedure of Law 16.3 (Umpires awarding a match). For the purposes of that Law, the start of the action shall be taken as the expiry of the 3 minutes referred to above.
Reactions
Former Pakistani pacer Shoaib Akthar said in X, “Very much against the spirit of cricket. I know it’s in the rule book but since no one has ever appealed before, Shakib could have avoided this too.”
Indian former opening batsman Gautam Gambhir said, “Absolutely pathetic what happened in Delhi today.”
Australian cricket player Usman Khawaja took to X and wrote, “Angelo made his crease then his helmet strap broke. How is that timed out? I’m all for timed out if he doesn’t make his crease but this is ridiculous. No different than a batsman getting to the crease then taking three minutes to face up.”
Former West Indian legend Ian Bishop wrote, “Umpires approached Shakib Al Hasan to withdraw the appeal twice, but Shakib said No twice.”
Mathews who was dismissed timed out claimed that he was ready before the timer had run out.
“I have two minutes to get to the crease and get myself ready, which I did,” Mathews said.
“And then it was an equipment malfunction. And I don’t know where the common sense went, because obviously it’s disgraceful from Shakib and Bangladesh.
“If they want to play cricket like that, I think there’s something wrong drastically. I still had five more seconds to go after my helmet broke off.”
The Sri Lankan all-rounder maintained that the team refused to shake hands with Bangladesh after the match as they believed the opposition, in refusing to withdraw their appeal, did not respect them and the spirit of the game.
“You need to respect people who respect us. It doesn’t mean that they have to respect the game itself. I mean, we all are ambassadors of this beautiful game.”
Mathews went on to add that the dismissal happened at a crucial juncture in the game. “I wasn’t trying to waste time. I wasn’t trying to take advantage of anything. It was just pure equipment malfunction.”
“And it just happened for the very first time in my career. And I’m absolutely shocked. I’m not going to say that if I had batted today, we would have won the match. I’m not saying that. I mean, I’m just talking about that incident where, obviously, it was a crucial time of the match. And we could have gone either way. I mean, we could have got 50-60 runs more as well.”