India and Bangladesh played out a nail-biting thriller at Adelaide Oval on Wednesday, where the Men in Blue registered a five-run victory to go on top of the Group 2 points table in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2022.
Following the epic match, Bangladesh wicket-keeper batsman Nurul Hasan claimed that the on-field umpires had missed an incident of ‘fake fielding’ from none other than Indian superstar Virat Kohli.
The incident in question occurred during the seventh over of Bangladesh’s chase when opener Litton Das struck the ball towards the deep off Axar Patel, and Arshdeep Singh sent in the throw. Kohli, who was positioned at the point, pretended a shy as the ball was going past him.
At that point in time, it went unnoticed by the on-field umpires Marais Erasmus and Chris Brown, as well as from both the Bangladesh batters – Das and Najmul Shanto. Post the game, Nurul mentioned the incident while talking to reporters and said that had that decision gone Bangladesh’s way, it could have been a different scenario.
Notably, India won the contest by five runs [DLS method], the exact margin of the run penalty associated with fake fielding. According to Law 41.5, which is related to unfair play, in case of “deliberate distraction, deception or obstruction of [the] batter”, the umpire can declare that particular delivery as a dead ball and award the batting side five runs.
“We all saw that it was wet ground. Eventually, when we talk about these things, there was also a fake throw. It could have been a five-run penalty. That also could have gone our way, but unfortunately, even that didn’t materialise,” said Narul.
With the victory, India are an inch closer to booking a birth in the semi-finals of the multi-team tournament. The Men in Blue have six points with a positive net run rate of +0.730. They have one game left against Zimbabwe, which is scheduled to take place at the MCG on Sunday, November 06.
