Slip slidin' away

We were playing New Zealand in Cuttack in 2003 - the sixth ODI. I was bowling to Craig McMillan, with Scott Styris at the other end. There was plenty of dew around and as I got into my delivery stride, the ball slipped out of my hand and rolled towards mid-on. McMillan thought I had bowled the ball and ran towards mid-on. Neil Mallender, the umpire, signalled a dead ball, and Styris and I yelled to Macca that it was a dead ball.

But he charged towards the ball anyway, and Hemang Badani, who was at mid-on, and the fielder at midwicket scattered, running towards the boundary just in case McMillan had a go. None of us could stop laughing at the end of it.

There was another time when something similar happened, against Sri Lanka in Baroda. I was bowling the 50th over and Chaminda Vaas was batting. He was looking to jump down the crease, so I decided to do a Saqlain Mushtaq and pause in my delivery stride, looking to see where he was going before I fired the ball in. He jumped out, I tried to fire the ball into his pads, and it slipped completely - the ball landed well outside the pitch, perfectly bisected a diving Mahendra Singh Dhoni and the man at short fine-leg, and raced away for five!