Pakistan gave a strong reply to New Zealand in the ongoing second and final Test in Karachi on the third day, as they closed in on the Kiwi’s first innings total of 449 runs, thanks to a century from Saud Shakeel and excellent innings from Imam Ul Haq and Sarfaraz Ahmed.
Resuming their innings from 154/3, Imam Ul Haq failed to get to a triple-figure score and was dismissed by Tim Southee for 83 runs. Then Saud Shakeel and Sarfaraz Ahmed got together and added 150 runs for the 5th wicket.
The partnership scored runs at a decent pace but was broken when Sarfaraz was stumped by tom Blundell off the bowling of Daryl Mitchell, down the leg side.
The square leg umpire went to the TV umpire Ahsan Raza for confirmation. After confirming that there was no edge off the bat on the leg side, the umpire moved to replays of stumping. The replays showed that though Sarfaraz Ahmed had brought his leg back in the crease, his heel was not grounded inside.
The front replays showed a better part of the foot behind the crease, but the back replays showed that only a couple of spikes were barely touching the ground and TV umpire Ahsan Raza had to make the difficult decision that since Sarfaraz had nothing grounded behind the crease, he was given out.
Here is the video:
However, the cricket community on Twitter was enraged by the decision as according to them, clearly, the Pakistani keeper-batter had some part of his foot grounded behind the crease.
Here are their reactions: