There is a word "significantly" which describe the deviation from the line of running. How much is significant ? By looking at the replay, the altered line of running from Hafiz can't be called significantly.

Bowden wasn't looking when he made the decision - Tabrez

Excellent result in the end though the 'chokers' tried their sneakiest best to yet again play dirty with a sub-continent team. Pakistan should now win the last ODI and show Mr. AB Devil-Liar where SA belongs.

The way rule stands in my opinion Hafeez was out. However, it is a stupid law. When a batsman gets an inside edge & the ball is going on to hit stump, he is allowed to kick it out or stop it from hitting the stumps. This too should also be disallowed if you are going to stop batsman coming in line between the ball & stump to prevent a run out.

This was purely a poorly supervised match full of bias against Pakistan especially by Billy Bowden and the South African Umpire. When South Africa was losing the umpires did not give wides on many balls which were way over the head of batsman and were also outside the leg stump! Shame on South African Cricket Board and ICC as well who did not take any action on such a biased umpiring!

Iam an English fan and I thought it was a poor decision to give Hafeez out. The wicket keeper could have more easily thrown the ball to either of the two players who were close to the stumps and ran him out by two yards. The umpire was not best placed (square on to the wicket) and therefore not able to clearly judge the flight of the ball. The batsmen was not looking at the ball or the thrower, only concerned with reaching the crease, even though aiming his run at the wicket might have been a few degrees straighter! The close proximity of the two fielders to the stumps made the difference in my opinion. Justice was done! Pakistan won!!

From videos , it looks other way round. Looks like AB was aiming to stumps and when Hafeez realized he would not make his ground in time , he tried to use the age old technique of blocking stumps with body. However he forgot rules had been changed. So yes he was correctly out

Rules are there to be applied with some wisdom and not blindly. It was there for everyone to see the poor batsman was just running to reach the other end, he was not even looking behind, how could he be blamed for obstructing the field? I hope umpires look at the situation in its entirety and not make the same mistake again.

when AB threw the ball hafeez was not looking behind....period and end of story. Pakistan has this continous bias aginst it especially from the people invloved in this game from the most civilized race on this planet. In every game of this series there have been completely different standards of giving out wide deliveries from quite a shameless lot of umpires. Pakistani players are penalised and suspended and even banned on things that are absolutely within rights of their own players....remember rashid latif incidence? i have seen many dozen catches being wrongly claimed from their players since that happened and even given out with absolute approval of the commentory guys as well....is everyone else in this world blind to all this??? really???

@Hamid Ali. If the exact same thing had happened to a SA player (against Pakistan), we would have seen benefit of the doubt to the batsman. This was apparent in the test series where hotspot decisions and similar situations resulted in different outcomes depending on which way hampered Pakistan.