Feature

No-balls, and a no-run

Plays of the Day from the IPL match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders in Vizag

Sidharth Monga
Sidharth Monga
22-Apr-2015
The excitable Mr Pathan  •  BCCI

The excitable Mr Pathan  •  BCCI

The overthrow
At the start of the third over, Shikhar Dhawan opened the face to an offbreak from Johan Botha, guiding the ball to short third man. There was no real attempt to sneak in a single, but Yusuf Pathan did what irks many old-timers: just let rip a throw for no reason. What's more, it wasn't accurate, and it allowed an easy overthrow. To rub it in David Warner, who shouldn't have been on strike, danced down to the next ball and drove it over extra cover for four.
The field placement
When Botha came back in the 13th over of the game to finish his quota, Warner mis-hit a low full toss. The moment it left the bat it looked like it would find long-on to perfection. Astonishingly, though, this lobbed, in all likelihood, the tallest man in the city, Morne Morkel, and didn't even go for a six. The thing was, Morkel was stationed wide at long-on, and quite a few yards in, which meant he was left in that embarrassing position. Gautam Gambhir, the captain, didn't look too exasperated, which might suggest it was his placement and not that Morkel had wandered off, but it still was a strange position: wide long-on with an offspinner bowling to a left-hand batsmen.
The no-balls
In the last over of Sunrisers' innings, Umesh Yadav produced what he would have thought were two wickets, but the third umpire had to check on no-balls on both occasions. The first was a front-foot call when he bowled Naman Ojha, and you couldn't say for sure he had a part of the foot behind the line. The third umpire, though, stayed with the original on-field call, and sent Ojha on his way. Two balls later, KL Rahul hit a full toss to long-on's hands, but he was asked to wait while the third umpire checked how high the ball was. Rahul had met the ball in front of his body, it was on its way down, he was crouched a little and he met the ball a touch higher than the waist. This was clearly less a no-ball than the previous one, but this one was called. Hopefully this was not vintage Indian justice, keeping both parties happy.
The no-run
In all amateur cricket, the last ball of a limited-overs innings always ends in a run-out unless the ball has been hit to or over the fence, or unless a wicket has been lost already. The idea is, if the ball has not become dead, you keep on running. Don't worry about your wicket, you never know what misfield or overthrow might occur; give yourselves a chance of that extra run. In the transition from amateur cricket to international variety, a worryingly high number of cricketers forget the principle. Rahul played the last ball of Sunrisers' innings, and premeditated a shuffle away from the stumps. Yadav cleverly bowled one wide of off stump and wicketkeeper Robin Uthappa looked desperate to not allow them a bye, getting ready with an underarm flick almost before he had collected the ball, but when he looked up, he saw Rahul and Moises Henriques were not even running. Not sure what happens during the transition from amateur to professional cricket, but we amateurs will never be able to get this resistance to risking the wicket for that one extra run that could prove crucial in the end.

Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo