South Africa spinner Tabraiz Shamsi has come out in defense of keeper Quinton de Kock in the fake fielding runout incident involving Fakhar Zaman in the second ODI at Johannesburg on Sunday.

The Cricket fraternity and fans were divided after it seemed that Quinton de Kock distracted Fakhar Zaman by pointing towards the bowling end on the first ball of the last over of the Pakistan innings.

This led to Zaman looking back to check on his partner, but fielding Aiden Markram threw the ball at the batting end and caught Zaman short of the crease as his throw hit the stumps directly.

This led to many Pakistani experts and Twitterverse asking the ICC and match officials to take action against De Kock for what they thought was a blatant case of fake fielding which resulted in Zaman’s run out, who was batting on 193 and had a chance to hit his second ODI double-hundred.

SA v PAK 2021: Temba Bavuma calls Quinton de Kock's runout of Fakhar Zaman 'clever'

Pakistan lost the match by 17 runs, ending on 324/9 chasing 341 runs to win and Proteas ended up leveling the three-match ODI series 1-1.

In all the melee, Tabraiz Shamsi called for the hate to stop on Quinton de Kock and asked the haters to leave him alone. He said that De Kock was asking the fielder to back up at the non-striker’s end.

Furthermore, Shamsi indicated that it was the batsman who was at fault for turning back to check on his partner, instead of trying to complete the run.

Fakhar Zaman’s 193 ended up as the highest individual ODI score while chasing a total and second-highest individual score in an ODI coming in a loss.