Birmingham, July 1: Hindsight might suggest that it was a pivotal moment in the game, but that’s the beauty of hindsight, isn’t it? There is no gainsaying what course the contest would have taken had Virat Kohli flashed the 'T’ symbol at umpire Aleem Dar in the 11th over of England’s innings at Edgbaston on Sunday (June 30), but it sure did provide a talking point.
The sequence of events went thus: Brought on as first change, Hardik Pandya banged in his fourth delivery short to Jason Roy, the opener who was back in action after missing the previous three games with a hamstring injury.
Then 21 out of 49 without loss, Roy instinctively went for a pull. As the ball snaked past the batsman and nestled in Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s gloves, Pandya went up in appeal, only to look on with mortification as Dar signalled a wide.
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Pandya seemed reasonably convinced that the ball had made contact with one of Roy’s gloves before being caught by the wicketkeeper but then again, bowlers always feel that they have got their man.
Dhoni didn’t seem entirely convinced, those in the ring were divided on whether the batsman had gloved the ball or not. As the 15-second DRS timer wound down, Kohli opted not to use the review. Subsequent replays affirmed that Pandya was justified in feeling hard done by. Ultra Edge evidenced a clear spike, slow-motion pictures confirmed that had India opted to challenge Dar’s decision, they would have effected their first breakthrough.
The gasps of disappointment as the giant screen at the ground flashed the replays were prolonged. There was hand-waving aplenty, heads were held in palms in anguish in the stands. On the park, however, there was a quiet acceptance of the situation. A decision had to be made on whether to take the review or not; in the absence of any great conviction from any single individual, the call to not use up the review was justified, no matter what happened subsequently.
Kohli, and Pandya, must have felt a more than tiny tinge of regret as Roy teed off thereafter to muscle his way to 66, off a mere 57 deliveries with seven fours and two sixes. That one of those fours and one of those sixes came off successive deliveries immediately after the wide that wasn’t would have been particularly hard to digest. England could have been 49 for one; instead, by the time Roy was finally dismissed thanks to a spectacular diving catch on the boundary by sub fielder Ravindra Jadeja, the score board had rattled to 160 in just 22.1 overs. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
(R Kaushik is a cricket writer who has followed the sport closely for nearly three decades, and is covering his seventh World Cup)