The first storm to hit IPL-12 has been one of Gaja-like high cyclonic intensity. Ravichandran Ashwin is in the thick of it after having ‘Mankaded’ Jos Buttler. A torrent of criticism has come from some former captains like Shane Warne and Michael Vaughan. Many have even been unfairly critical of the bowler.
What Ashwin did is against the spirit of the game. The third umpire ruled the batsman out after watching the video evidence. Whether he can consider the fact that the bowler did not complete the run out in his natural delivery stride but seemed to hang on for an instant and turn around to break the wicket is something the keepers of cricket laws – the Marylebone Cricket Club – may have to rule upon.
Ashwin’s explanation – “On my part it was very instinctive and it was not planned or anything like that”- sounds credible enough for him to be forgiven for what he did though he is the first bowler in 12 seasons of IPL to do so, which means he has broken a convention or a gentleman’s agreement.
He points out that “It’s there in the rules of the game. I don’t know where the understanding of the spirit of the game comes from because quite naturally if it’s there in the rules, it’s there. So probably the rules have to go back and be sorted.” That is a pedantic explanation for something he says he instinctively did.
The fiercest reaction came from the legendary leg spinner Shane Warne. In fairness to him, he played the game in a kind of Victorian spirit that a lot of us had learnt when we learnt to play and love the gentleman’s game, that is if you forget the diurectic in his blood sample which stopped him from taking part in the 2003 World Cup. Warne believes the run out was “disgraceful and embarrassing and said Ashwin’s career would be defined by such a “low act.”
If “It’s not cricket” has become a term for anything that is unfair or deviously subterranean. This goes to show how much of a model game cricket was as opposed to the physical contact sports like rugby, soccer or hockey. Somehow, the Mankad run out, regardless of batsmen trying to steal ground, seems too much of a lowly act.
Villain or not, Ashwin turned what was a losing game around with that questionable tactic. It may be frowned upon but modern cricketers tend to play to win rather fiercely, even desperately, as is the case with the King XI Punjab captain Ashwin, who is propping up the performances of a team that has never won the IPL.
The modern rule says a bowler does not have to warn a batsman before effecting a ‘Mankad’ run out. To that extent, what Ashwin did is within the Laws of Cricket, but morally it is questionable. The fact that Buttler had once before being run out in this manner in an ODI against Sri Lanka in 2004 by Sachithra Senanayake would suggest that he has been a regular at stealing ground.
We don’t weep for Buttler, only for the game of cricket and what it has become in its T20 avatar, taken a further notch down by this Ashwin act.
