Former India cricketer Virender Sehwag has reacted to the recent controversy during the Women’s Hockey semi-final match between India and Australia in the ongoing Commonwealth Games (CWG 2022) in Birmingham.
Despite Savita Punia making a fine save in the penalty shoot-out, Australia's Rosie Malone, who missed her first attempt, was gifted another chance, as the stopwatch hadn't started. This helped Malone score in the retry which led to India eventually losing the penalty shootout 0-3 despite the match finishing 1-1 after the time ran out.
The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has apologized for the episode, saying it would "thoroughly review" the clock incident.
"In the semi-final match of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games between Australia and India (Women), the penalty shootout started mistakenly too early (the clock was not yet ready to operate), for which we apologise.
The process in place for such situations is that the penalty shootout has to be retaken, which was done. The FIH will thoroughly review this incident in order to avoid any similar issues in the future,” FIH said in a statement.
However, Sehwag brought up the biasness in the situation and said that the same thing happened to India in cricket before it became a superpower. He also added that he was proud of the India Women’s hockey team for their performance.
Sehwag tweeted: "Penalty miss hua Australia se and the Umpire says, Sorry Clock start nahi hua. Such biasedness used to happen in cricket as well earlier till we became a superpower, Hockey mein bhi hum jald banenge and all clocks will start on time. Proud of our girls.”
