India might have finally won an ODI in Australia on Sunday but it wasn’t without its fair share of controversy. Unsurprisingly, it was Virat Kohli who was the centre of it.
India’s Test captain came in to bat at 124/1, with his team chasing 331. Off the very first ball he faced, he slashed an upper cut, right over the slip cordon and straight into the Spidercam camera that was dangling above the ground. The ball ricocheted and went off the boundary. David Warner and captain Steve Smith immediately gesticulated and signalled “dead ball” and after a lengthy period of deliberation, the umpires ruled it so.
Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was a relieved man after the win but when the topic veered to the incident described above at the post match conference, he did not seem pleased. “I am quite a traditional guy,” he said. “I have always felt that… anything that disturbs the game of cricket I don’t like it”
He even went on to suggest an outrageous solution: penalise the spidercam operators $2000 every time it gets hit by the ball.
Of course, this is not the first time the Spidercam has caused controversy. In the Sydney Test last year between Australia and India, Steve Smith failed to hold on to a miscue from debutant KL Rahul. Immediately after dropping the catch, he pointed at the camera stationed above and fumed. Rahul went on to score a century.
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