Web Desk
Of the 10 modes of dismissal in cricket, only one had not been seen in nearly a century and a half of the sport being played at the international level. Batters had been given out handling the ball, hitting the ball twice and even obstructing the field, but no one had ever been timed out while playing international cricket since 1877. That changed at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on November 6, when Angelo Mathews, Sri Lanka’s most experienced player, was timed out after not being ready to take strike against Shakib Al Hasan.
There was little hint of the drama to come when Shakib had Sadeera Samarawickrama caught in the deep. Mathews, who once suffered the misfortune of being run-out for 99 in a Test match in India, ambled out, but seemed to have brought the wrong helmet with him. As he tried to reason with the umpires that the strap was faulty, time ticked over, and Bangladesh appealed. The on-field umpires upheld the appeal, following the letter of the law, and Mathews was on his way.
The timed-out dismissal had been recorded six times in first-class cricket, for reasons ranging from injury to missed flights to floods. But this was the first such occurrence in the international arena. Back in 2006-07, Graeme Smith of South Africa chose not to appeal when India’s Sourav Ganguly took nearly six minutes to grab his equipment and sprint to the middle at Newlands in Cape Town. Sachin Tendulkar, who had been pencilled in to bat at No. 4, was ineligible on account of the 18 minutes he had spent off the field at the end of the South African innings.
During the Ashes series earlier in 2023, Nathan Lyon of Australia tore his calf muscle. Fearing that he might be timed out, Lyon waited near the boundary line so that he could hobble to the middle and avoid being timed out.
It’s debatable whether Bangladesh would have appealed if a place in the 2025 Champions Trophy was not at stake. Both Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have endured awful World Cup campaigns and been the target of much criticism back home. In such a scenario, it was perhaps natural that Shakib chose to invoke the law, rather than the much-talked-of spirit of the game.