Picture Credit: Twitter/@PeterDellaPenna
It has been three days since India’s Deepti Sharma ran Charlie Dean out as the English batter was trying to gain an undue advantage by advancing too far down the crease. But the controversy around that dismissal is not taking a back seat in the foreseeable future. People are still talking about the ‘mankad’ dismissal and there are still two groups- one that finds nothing wrong with it and the other finds it against the spirit of the game.
Even after Deepti Sharma revealed that the English batter was warned before the Indian team decided to run her out, people are not ready to believe it. As the discussion grows further, an English journalist tried to explain the fiasco by sharing a thread of tweets. Peter Della Penna posted as many as 29 tweets in his thread to explain how the dismissal transpired.
Peter starts by explaining how Charlie Dean chose to ignore the rules right after she walked out to bat and kept violating them continuously during her stay at the crease. The England batter tried to gain an undue advantage as many as 73 times including the ball she got out to, the journalist further explains.
He also pointed out that Dean was taking smaller strides (3-6 inches) while she was batting with regular batters but it was around 12-18 inches when she was batting with the tailenders.
“When she batted with Amy Jones, she generally got a head start of 3-6 inches. But batting with Cross & Davies, the No 10 & 11, her starts were much bigger, typically at least a foot early, and when both were new to the crease, it was as much as 2 feet early to try to get strike,” tweets, Peter.
The journalist also highlighted that none of Dean’s batting partners tried to get a start, be it Jones, Cross or Davies. “None of Dean's partners had the same issue staying in the crease. No. 11 Davies in particular was always with a keen eye on the bowler's hand until the ball was released. With a few exceptions, Dean never looked at bowler's hand to see the ball released and carelessly took off,” he added.
He concluded his argument by saying that leaving the non-striker's end early is not cheating. It is almost the same as the batter at the striker’s end advancing to hit a shot but as there is risk in this move, there is an equal risk of getting out while advancing at the non-striker’s end. “Lastly, I don't consider leaving non-striker's end early as cheating, just as leaving striker's crease early or batting outside the crease entirely is not cheating. But just as a striker accepts the risks and consequences of leaving the crease early, so must the non-striker,” Peter signed off.
Read the complete thread here:
