'Wanted to keep Dhoni indoors? What if it was Kohli in T20 World Cup': Kaif to Cummins after no appeal against Jadeja
Kaif wanted to know if Pat Cummins didn't appeal against Jadeja just to keep MS Dhoni indoors a little longer and would he have done the same against Kohli?
Former India cricketer Mohammad Kaif asked a couple of burning questions to Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Pat Cummins. Did Cummins withdraw the obstructing the field appeal against Chennai Super Kings' Ravindra Jadeja to delay MS Dhoni's arrival in the middle? And secondly, would he have done that in a World Cup match against Virat Kohli?
To give more context to the readers, the incident happened in the fourth ball of the 19th over in the CSK innings. Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled a yorker to Jadeja who hit straight back to the bowler. Bhuvneshwar collected it and took shy at the stumps seeing Jadeja out of the crease. But the ball hit the CSK all-rounder as he was trying to get back to the crease.
SRH keeper Heinrich Klaasen had his arms up in the air asking a question briefly to the umpires. Bhuvneshwar, however, showed no interest. He straightaway walked back to his mark and neither did captain Cummins.
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In fact, when the on-field umpires got together to send it upstairs, Cummins informed them that there was no appeal from their side.
"Two questions to Pat Cummins on withdrawing the obstructing the field appeal against Jadeja. Was it a tactical call to let a struggling Jadeja be the crease and keep Dhoni indoors? Would he have done the same if it was Virat Kohli at World T20?" Kaif wrote on X.
If we keep aside the debate whether Cummins and SRH even appealed or not at the first place, Kaif's couple of questions are valid. Jadeja was indeed struggling to hit the boundaries. He hit only four fours in his 23-ball stay in the middle. When he finally got out after scoring 31 at a strike rate of 134, MS Dhoni was left with only three balls to bat.
CSK fluffed their lines during their batting innings and then were struck by a tornado named Abhishek Sharma whose 37 off 12 balls put Sunrisers Hyderabad on course of their comfortable six-wicket victory against the defending champions.
The SRH bowlers were very disciplined while restricting CSK to 165 for 5 in 20 overs with only 37 being scored off last five overs. If 37 off last five was a poor effort from CSK, young southpaw Abhishek, who is having a great tournament, also scored 37 but off only 12 deliveries with four sixes to lay the platform.
Aiden Markram then anchored a run chase with a 36-ball 50 as SRH knocked off the runs in just 18.1 overs.
