Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin's wife Prithi has cleverly yet mind-blowingly reacted to Delhi Capitals’ head coach Ricky Ponting's recent remarks regarding his controversial mankading act in the Indian Premier League (IPL) last year.
Last season, Rajasthan Royals’ Jos Buttler was shockingly 'Mankaded' by then Kings XI Punjab captain Ashwin during an IPL match in Jaipur – which created a lot of drama among the cricket fraternity and fans with many calling veteran spinner’s acts disgraceful, unfair and against the spirit of the game, while some say his actions were within the laws of the game.
Well, the matter has yet again unfolded when Ashwin’s new IPL franchise coach Ponting warned the Indian spinner by saying the DC franchise has a strict policy against the controversial method of dismissal ahead of the IPL 2020 starting on 19th September in the UAE.
Reacting to Ponting’s remarks, Prithi wrote on Twitter: “Last evening with beau @ashwinravi99 before he leaves for the IPL, which is basically forever. But the headlines made me ‘The Butler’ for tonight. #mytimeranout #thatthatmanthatthatproblem.”
Ponting had said on The Grade Cricketer Podcast: “I’ll be having a chat with him about [mankad], that’s the first thing I’ll do. Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to afford to bring in this year. Look, he’s a terrific bowler, and he’s done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be others around the tournament who’ll think about doing this well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’.”
The DC coach further added, “So, that’s going to be a conversation and that’s going to be a hard conversation I will have to have with him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll take it on the chin. I think, even him, looking back now, probably he’d say it was within the rules and he’s right to do it, but this is not within the spirit of the game, not in the way I want, at least with the Delhi Capitals anyway. You’ve only got to do that once at the start of a tournament, and then all the players see it, and you can guarantee the players won’t be fudging any ground from then on.”
Ponting signed off by saying, “I chatted with some of the match referees about it during last year’s IPL as well. If the umpires make a stance and do something to warn the batsman that they might be cheating, then that’s better than having the ugly incident of a mankad.”
(With DNA Inputs)
