Kolkata: The International Cricket Council (ICC) has implemented a new rule for “fake fielding” from October 1 2017, which states that if a fielder does a fake fielding during a match, five runs would be awarded to the batting team as a penalty. The controversial incident took place today during the first Test between India and Sri Lanka but both the standing umpires Nigel Llong and Joel Wilson surprisingly gave the decision in favour of the visitors. The incident had happened on the fourth ball of the 53rd over, when Bhuvneshwar Kumar pushed a ball of Dasun Shanaka through covers. He was thinking of taking a second run and to distract him the Lankan skipper Dinesh Chandimal, put a slide though the ball was no where near him.
India skipper Virat Kohli didn’t look to happy with the decision as he showed his five fingers towards the cameras for a penalty of five valuable runs. The same incident had happened in the recently concluded JLT Cup in Australia where Marnus Labuschagne of Queensland Bulls was penalized with five penalty runs for doing a fake fielding. As per the ICC this type of things are against the spirit of cricket.
Here is what happened:
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka put up a spirited bowling effort to dismiss India for 172 in their first innings at lunch on day three of the opening cricket Test at the Eden Gardens. Coming out to bat at an overnight score of 47, Cheteshwar Pujara (52 off 117, 10×4) completed his half-century in the morning but could not make it big after being cleaned up by Gamage (2/59) with a superb in-cutter.
Wriddhiman Saha (29 from 83 balls; 6X4) and Ravindra Jadeja (22 from 37 balls; 2×4, 1×6) produced a brisk 48-run seventh wicket partnership but off-spinner Perera (2/19) struck twice in space of three ball to remove both of them.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar (13 from 17 balls; 1×4) and Mohammed Shami (22 off 24 balls; 3×4) made some quick runs and the latter was involved in a 26-run last wicket partnership with Umesh Yadav (6 not out) to prop India’s total.