Former Indian captain and current wicket-keeper batsman, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, displayed another epitome of his fine judgment as he almost managed to dismiss Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews via a street-smart run-out.
On the penultimate delivery of the 11th over, Angelo Mathews guided a Hardik Pandya delivery to the third-man. In a bid to come back for a couple of runs, Mathews found himself in some sort of danger at the batting end where Dhoni, who once appeared to collect the ball left it to hit the stumps on the full.
Mathews had eventually made his crease, but, what was visible from the sight was that whether it was a genuine effort from Dhoni or was it a case of ‘fake fielding’?
Here are some pics of the incident:
While the disturbed bails excited the Indian supporters, what was arguably was a potential breach of the new fake fielding law.
According to one of the new laws which came into the application from October 1, 2017, was that of providing the batting team a bonus of five runs if a fielder pretends to collect and/or throw the ball when the ball was actually not in his/her hands.
As clearly stated by Law 41.5 of the MCC, it deals with “deliberate distraction, deception or obstruction of batsman”. Clause 41.5.1 states: “it is unfair for any fielder wilfully to attempt, by word or action, to distract, deceive or obstruct either batsman after the striker has received the ball.”
Thus, the fielder in question (in this case Dhoni) must have deliberately attempted to fox a batsman by faking the gathering of the ball and/or throwing it and thereby stopping the batsman from running.
However, in Dhoni’s case, he didn’t prevent the batsmen to go for teh runs but the things would’ve been different if Mathews had got late by a matter of second.
Watch the video:
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