The Indian Premier League is a tournament of very high intensity and it does not spare even the best of players with immense calmness on the field. The tournament has seen players who otherwise remain calm and collected in the field losing all of their cool and reacting in manners unbecoming of them.
The latest edition of such an incident happened when the captain of Chennai Super Kings MS Dhoni joined his teammate Shardul Thakur to start a heated argument against one of the on-field umpires Paul Reiffel to ultimately influence his decision.
In the fifth ball of the 19th over in the Sunrisers Hyderabad's attempt to chase 167 runs set by CSK, Shardul Thakur attempted to bowl a wide yorker away from the arc of batsman Rashid Khan but the ball was clearly outside the reference line marked for the wide ball.
Replays showed former Australian cricketer turned umpire Reiffel was in the motion of extending his arms to signal wide before both Shardul Thakur and MS Dhoni objected to it and Reiffel changing his decision midway through his signal. While there is nothing wrong when it concerns the laws of cricket, it cannot be neglected that the decision might have been prompted due to the protests from the legendary captain and his bowler Shardul Thakur.
The Section 2.12of the IPL match playing condition says:
"Umpire’s decision: An umpire may alter any decision provided that such alteration is made promptly. This apart, an umpire’s decision, once made, is final."
Twitter was quick to take notice and criticise the whole incident with both well-known experts and fans terming the decision weak.
This is not the first instance of MS Dhoni losing his cool over an umpiring decision. In the last season, Dhoni was agitated on the failure of on-field umpires to call no-ball for a delivery that was clearly above waist height against the Rajasthan Royals and had walked onto the pitch from the dugout to have a heated discussion with the umpires.
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