Rajasthan Royals (RR) director of cricket and head coach Kumar Sangakkara has shared his opinion on the recent umpiring controversy in his team’s IPL 2022 match against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on May 2 at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
During the penultimate over of Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) run-chase on Monday, May 2, on-field umpire Nitin Pandit called three wides when Nitish Rana was shuffling around in the crease to break Prasidh Krishna’s rhythm. Rana kept giving himself room to play on the on-side and Krishna kept trying to bowl wide away from the batter.
However, much to captain Samson and bowler’s dismay, the umpire adhered to the wide ball rule and kept outstretching his arms.
“Consistency is the most important thing in terms of calling wides. There are some new rules where you can’t create a wide, but destroy a wide by moving around the crease and before the delivery is made, any movement that you make becomes a starting point for the wide line to start moving. It’s what it is at the end of the day, but at the same time, we’ve got to realise that we didn’t play good enough cricket in the last two games,” Sangakkara said in the post-match press conference.
This was RR’s second straight loss after being defeated by Mumbai Indians (MI) by five wickets and the fourth loss in total in 10 matches. Sangakkara admitted that in both the matches, the Royals couldn’t quite give their innings a finishing kick. However, he lauded the bowlers for trying their hearts out.
“Two scratchy games, we didn’t get enough runs on the board. Against Mumbai, we were 130/4 with four overs to go and 170 should have been on the board. Today, we just got a little bit bogged down in the middle overs. Sanju (Samson) batted really well and (Shimron) Hetmyer, at the backend, got us to some sort of respectability.
The bowlers in both games did their utmost to take us into the last over. But a lot to improve on, and a lot to think about for the players and all of us and get better as we get into the next game,” Sangakkara added.
Royals are next scheduled to clash with Punjab Kings (PBKS) on Saturday, May 7 at the Wankhede Stadium.
(India Today inputs)
