Ravichandran Ashwin is no doubt a fantastic Indian spinner. He is one of the most vital cogs in the Indian Test team and has delivered for the team on many occasions. However, something that he did in the last edition of the Indian Premier League created quite a stir and left the people divided.
Ashwin took the cricketing world by storm during IPL 2019 when he dismissed Jos Butler by ‘mankading’. Ashwin was captaining the Kings XI Punjab and the incident took place against Rajasthan Royals. While Jos Butler was backing up, Ashwin took the bails off.
The incident led to many debates where some defended the bowler while others were simply flabbergasted. On one hand, people thought it was within the rules, while others criticized Ashwin harshly for not maintaining the sportsmen spirit of the game.
The 13th edition of the Indian Premier League is all set to begin from September 19 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The matches will be played in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. Ravichandran Ashwin will be representing Delhi Capitals this year and it seems Ricky Ponting is going to have a long chat with him.
I’ll be having a chat with him about mankad: Ricky Ponting
Speaking on The Grade Cricketer Podcast, Ponting said that for me mankading isn’t acceptable at all and I am going to talk to the Indian biggie about it. The former Australian captain had already cleared it to his team last year that doing such thing is just not within the spirit of the game. He had made it clear that you may be inclined to do such thing but this is not the way we play cricket.
“I’ll be having a chat with him about [mankad], that’s the first thing I’ll do. Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to afford to bring in this year.
Ponting agrees that Ashwin is a great bowler and has done a wonderful job in the IPL, but he adds that, I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be other around the tournament who’ll think about doing this as well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’,” said the Delhi Capitals coach.
“So, that’s going to be a conversation and that’s going to be a hard conversation I will have to have with him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll take it on the chin. I think, even him, looking back now, probably he’d say it was within the rules and he’s right to do it, but this is not within the spirit of the game, not in the way I want, at least with the Delhi Capitals anyway,” he added.
It would be interesting to know how this conversation goes as Ashwin has always defended his actions and he finds no harm in doing so. He has always said, “What I did is what the rules are supposed to be.”
