A bizarre incident involving umpires left players confused and in splits at the same time during the 42nd match of IPL 2019 between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Wednesday.
It all happened during the first innings of the match. Murugan Ashwin bowled the last ball of the 14th over and to which Marcus Stoinis eked out an inside edge to square leg for a single. It also brought the game to a halt as the umpires called it a Strategic Time-out and KXIP skipper Ravichandran Ashwin instantly handed over the ball to the business end umpire, Bruce Oxenford.
Given the fact that Chettithody Shamshuddin was going to be at the bowling end after the Time-out, Oxenford instantly gave the ball to his colleague as players went for a 2.30 minutes break.
Later, Ankit Rajpoot was asked by Ashwin to bowl the 15th over but when he took the mark, he was waiting for the ball. When the Punjab pacer asked for the ball, everybody started looking for it. In desperation, Ravichandran Ashwin started searching for it, then Oxenford came forward to ask Shamshuddin about the ball.
After a few minutes of searching, Shamshuddin remembered that he had kept the ball in his pocket and found it out instantly. Everyone was in chuckles and Oxenford was smiling at his colleague’s forgetfulness. RCB star batsman AB de Villiers also couldn’t control himself at a moment of sheer comedy.
Here’s the video:
— CricBoll (@mycricboll) April 25, 2019
