The Indian stalwart, Virat Kohli is often around the limelight and in recent times it has been because of the consistency t which he has been scoring runs. He is again in the news when he was accused of ‘Fake fielding’ against Bangladesh by keeper-batter Nurul Hasan. In the second ball of the 7th over of the Bangladesh chase, Arshdeep Singh collected the ball in the deep and threw it towards keeper Dinesh Karthik as Bangladesh openers Litton Das and Nazmul Hasan Shanto attempted a couple.
In between all this, Virat Kohli shadow practiced collecting the ball and throwing it when the ball was not even near him. His actions had no bearing on the Bangladesh pair as they completed the second run without being distracted but according to Bangladesh and also former India opener Aakash Chopra, it doesn’t matter whether the batters were deceived or not. It is actually the attempt to do it, that’s what qualifies as ‘fake fielding.’
According to the law, if the umpires believe that the fielder has made an attempt of deceiving the batters by faking a dive or a throw or has made any other fielding gesture when the ball is not near him then they the fielding team will get five penalty runs.
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Talking about the same in his latest video, Aakash Chopra said, “The basic premise of the law is that if the on-field umpire feels that you have tried to deceive the batters (by faking a throw or a dive or any other action when the ball is not near you) now whether they have been actually deceived or not doesn’t matter. It will result in five penalty runs. If that five penalty runs were given, the two that the Bangladesh pair ran, would still have been counted, the ball would have been dead and Bangladesh would have gotten to choose who takes strike in the next ball.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wu66B9kkbQ
He further added, “Now what happened in this case? The on-field umpire didn’t see. It completely went unnoticed. If no one has seen it then you can’t charge it. The law says that the umpires need to notice it and judge it. Maybe the third umpire, if it’s in jurisdiction, can also intervene. Yes that 100% fake fielding because of the way he attempted to throw the ball.”
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Aakash Chopra concluded by saying, “If the umpires had seen it then we would’ve been slapped with a five-run penalty and we’ve won by five runs only.) So we escaped here but next time if someone does this then the umpires will have to be more careful. So are Bangladesh right? Yes, they are but nobody noticed it then so can’t do anything now.”
