R Ashwin, who was playing for Kings XI Punjab in IPL 2019, left the cricket fraternity stunned and received criticism from all over after he Mankaded Joss Buttler during a match between Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals.
During the match, Joss Buttler looked great in form, however, before he could make a major impact with his batting, R Ashwin decided to Mankad him. 1on seeing that Joss Buttler was away from the crease, R Ashwin took off the bails and appealed straight away, leaving the entire cricket fraternity shocked.
Though R Ashwin did everything under the rules and no lines were cross but he was brutally slammed for this, as this is widely seen against the spirit of cricket. From cricketers like Shane Warne, James Anderson to many others, everyone criticized Ashwin for Mankad-ing Buttler.
Now since R Ashwin has joined Delhi Capitals this season, Delhi Capitals’ Coach Ricky Ponting said that he will be having a conversation with R Ashwin and tell him to not Mankad anyone. In an interview, Ricky Ponting talked about the same on The Grade Cricketer Podcast and claimed that as long as he is the head coach, Ashwin won’t Mankad anyone. He said:
“Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to afford to bring in this year. Look, he’s a terrific bowler, and he’s done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be others around the tournament who’ll think about doing this well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’.”
He added:
“So, that’s going to be a conversation and that’s going to be a hard conversation I will have to have with him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll take it on the chin. I think, even him, looking back now, probably he’d say it was within the rules and he’s right to do it, but this is not within the spirit of the game, not in the way I want, at least with the Delhi Capitals anyway.”
Furthermore, Ponting added that he has his own preferred solution for stopping non-strikers from gaining an unfair advantage. He said:
“I think there are ways that you can actually stop batsmen cheating like that,” he said. “If the bowler was to stop, and the batsman was a foot out of his crease for instance, why don’t you just penalise him some runs or something? Then they won’t do it again.”
He added:
“You’ve only got to do that once at the start of a tournament, and then all the players see it, and you can guarantee the players won’t be fudging any ground from then on. I chatted to some of the match referees about it during last year’s IPL as well. If the umpires make a stance and do something to warn the batsman that they might be cheating, then that’s better than having the ugly incident of a mankad.”
