Article
It wasn’t a protest, we wanted to play super over, says Rayudu
By Aditya Pratap - Jan 11, 2018 5:15 pm
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A controversy occurred during a Zonal T20 match between Hyderabad and Karnataka, which eventually went onto the wire. The high-scoring clash saw both teams scoring over 200 but Hyderabad failed to chase down the target successfully by a fraction of margin.

But after the completion of the match, Hyderabad skipper Ambati Rayudu refused to leave the field in protest as umpires added 2 runs in Karnataka’s total during the innings’ break. Hyderabad fielder Mehdi Hasan was in contact with boundary ropes while stopping a ball and umpire gave it as a double. However, once the first innings was complete Karnataka skipper Vinay Kumar successfully requested to add those two runs in their count,

At the end, those two runs proved very decisive in the game as Hyderabad lost by the very exact margin. In the aftermath, both teams stayed at the pitch, where Rayudu was protesting against those runs. But he made it clear that he was only willing for a super over.

“There was some confusion in the middle at the start of our innings. What I went and told the umpire was ‘sir you cannot change the score, we are batting for 204 as our target’. That is exactly what I told him and he said ‘we’ll see it at the end, let the match start. The match was stopped for nine minutes, before the second innings. They had no business to stop the match once the target was declared. Then, what we said was we were playing for 204, and that was my exact words,” said Rayudu.

“At the end, we went and asked to start the Super Over. That is exactly our point of contention. We never even thought of stopping the second match, that has got nothing to do with us,” he added. “We were insisting that our match was not complete, we still have to play the Super Over. That is exactly why we went to the middle, we were actually going to warm up then”

“I’m sure of the rules. If he had changed immediately then it would have been perfect. Even if somebody gets out and you come inside and see that it’s not out, you don’t call the person back. Even in case of a no-ball not correctly called, you cannot call somebody back or add the scores. I don’t know what has happened but we were playing for 204. That is exactly what I wanted to tell and we were waiting for the Super Over which never happened,” Rayudu concluded.