An ardent cricket fan would have come across several mysterious incidents over the course of his viewing experience, or even on the field.
One incident that has puzzled people many times over has been the bails failing to come off despite the ball clipping it. According to the rules, the bails need to be completely dislodged for the batsman to make the long walk back. Quite often, this rule has come into play during close run-out calls.
On Saturday, fans across the world were left scratching their heads after a freak “dismissal” during an local match in Australia. The batsman, Jatinder Singh, playing for Moonee Valley against Strathmore Heights had reportedly played a poor shot and the ball went on to crash on to the stumps. However, despite the middle stump being uprooted, the bails remained intact.
The incident also led to the two teams furiously debating if the batsman had to take the long walk back before signalling that that Singh was indeed out. “Nobody had seen anything like that before,” said Valley skipper Michael Ozbun.
Ozbun recalled the incident: “I was on the boundary, I saw the stumps fly and thought ‘all right, he got bowled, it was a silly shot’. Then everybody was standing around the wickets and I didn’t know why. I went out there, saw what was going on and it was very confusing.”
He remarked that there was little chance that there would be repeat of the incident, “You probably couldn’t do that again if you tried. We weren’t sure if maybe [the stumps] were put it at a slight angle so there was just a little bit of pressure.
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