New Delhi: Rising Pune Supergiant all-rounder Ben Stokes produced a nice little cameo with the bat, scoring 39 off 25 balls to help his side post 148 against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League (IPL) encounter on Saturday. (IPL 2017 - Full Coverage | Points Table)
Stokes, who came in at No. 4 position, ahead of MS Dhoni as Ajinkya Rahane was dismissed after scoring 22 of 20 deliveries, was gifted a lifeline during the 2nd ball of the 15th over of RPS innings.
Facing a Rashid Khan googly, the Englishman ran down the wicket to try and hit but missed it as it went to the wicket-keeper Naman Ojha who couldn't get a firm hold of the ball to attempt stumping.
Ojha and Rashid, however, appealed to the umpire KN Ananthapadmanabhan for a caught behind and looked pretty convinced that the Englishman had edged the ball. The decision, though, didn't come in SRH's favour.
TV replays suggested that Stokes had in fact edged the ball but it hit Ojha’s helmet before landing in in his gloves, which is why the umpire couldn't give the batsman out.
Here's the video of the incident:-
https://t.co/vcfoe98mSg #VIVOIPL via @ipl
— Cricket-atti (@cricketatti) May 7, 2017
Rashid, though, compensated for Naman's error by dismissing Stokes on the very next delivery.
Here are the are the official rules followed:-
Providing that in every case
neither (i) at any time the ball
nor (ii) throughout the act of making the catch as defined in Law 19.4, any fielder in contact with the ball is, as described in Law 19.3(b), touching the boundary or grounded beyond the boundary, a catch shall be considered to be fair if
(a) the ball is hugged to the body of the catcher or accidentally lodges in his clothing or, in the case of a wicket-keeper only, in his pads. However, it is not a fair catch if the ball lodges in a protective helmet worn by a fielder.
Paceman Jaydev Unadkat was given Man of the Match for his five-wicket haul that included a hat-trick as Pune eked out a 12-run win over Hyderabad to jump to the second spot in IPL points table.
Defending a modest 148, the Pune outfit came up with a superb bowling performance with Unadkat (5/30) and Ben Stokes (3/30) doing the maximum damage, especially in the final overs to restrict Hyderabad to 136 for nine in 20 overs.
