“Sanju Samson was mocking the umpire,” says Daniel Vettori on Rajasthan’s strange use of DRS in the 19th over against KKR
Rajasthan Royals lost second match in a row in IPL 2022 and are now at the third position in the points table
The former RCB coach Daniel Vettori is of the view that the Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson was trying to “mock” the umpire when he sent a caught behind appeal upstairs with DRS in the 19th over of the game against KKR yesterday.
Vettori reckons Samson was frustrated by consistently calling of wide balls by the on-field umpire despite the batsmen moving from their usual positions.
In the 19th over of the game when KKR required 18 runs to win the game, Rajasthan adopted the strategy of bowling wide outside the off-stump with a fieldset in the deep on the offside.
The KKR batsmen, Rinku Singh and Nitish Rana could also clearly see what the game plan of Rajasthan was. So, they were trying to move towards the off stump and play a lap kind of shot over the head of the short third man fielder who was in the circle.
Generally, when a batsman moves from his usual position, the umpires don’t give it a wide even if the ball is normally wide. But, yesterday, despite the batsmen moving, the umpires were declaring it wide and that’s something which was frustrating Samson quite a lot.
Sanju Samson deliberately referred a not outcall for review out of frustration
Those balls were normally wides because they were too far outside off stump, but Samson was of the opinion that since the KKR batsmen were moving too much, those balls couldn’t be declared wide because by moving, the batsmen were actually getting very close to the ball.
So, on one of the occasions, when the umpire declared it a wide, Sanju Samson used the DRS for a caught-behind dismissal, just to ensure that everyone could see on replay how close the batsman was to the ball, even though he knew that the batsman hadn’t edged the ball and it was not out.
According to Daniel Vettori, who was speaking on the post-match show of ESPNCricinfo, it was just a case of Sanju mocking the umpire and nothing else, because he knew the edge wasn’t there.
