IPL 2020 / Umpire doesn't declare head-high delivery as no-ball in RCB-SRH match, criticised

Cricket Desk: The 52nd match of the ongoing 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2020) saw Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) locking horns with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on October 31, Saturday at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium. It was a bad day at the office for the Royal Challengers as their batting line-up collapsed yet again and failed to give a competitive total to their bowlers to defend.

Chasing 121, Hyderabad had an explosive start as they were positioned at 58 runs at the loss of one wicket in the powerplay. Though the team got four hiccups in the middle after losing their captain Warner early in the match, 39 off 32 by Wriddhiman Saha and 26 off 19 deliveries by Manish Pandey helped the team chase the total easily. This was also followed by a quickfire cameo by all-rounder Jason Holder who smashed 26* runs in 10 balls to take SRH home within 14.1 overs.

In this no-show run-chase match, a poor decision by the on-field umpires of not giving a no-ball sparked a controversy. While bowling the third ball of his second over of the evening, the ball slipped from Isuru Udana’s hand due to dew and resulted in a high toss ball. On-strike batsman Kane Williamson hit the ball towards the fine leg and was expecting a no-ball as the ball was away above from his waist.

No this isn’t a no ball 🙄🤣🤣🤣 @IPL pic.twitter.com/XcD4Gl0tT1

— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) October 31, 2020

However, the umpire on-duty didn’t look interested. As a result, the ball was not treated as a no-ball and no free hit was given to SRH. Indian veteran spinner Harbhajan Singh was amused with this decision and took to his official Twitter handle to criticize the umpires for their poor decision. Harbhajan wrote, “No this isn’t a no ball @IPL”.

RCB’s batting line-up collapses yet again

Winning the toss, David Warner sent RCB to bat first. After the powerplay, the Bangalore outfit was reeling at 30 runs at the loss of 2 wickets having lost the two important wickets of Devdutt Padikkal and skipper Virat Kohli cheaply. This was followed by a 43-run stand between AB de Villiers and Josh Philippe. However, De Villiers showed urgency in hitting big shots and gifted his wicket to Nadeem.

After that, there was a string of wickets for RCB as their weak middle-order was exposed yet again and no batsman showed the intent of taking the team towards a decent total. Thus, the team could post only a mere score of 120 at the loss of 7 wickets.