IPL 2020 | Won’t let Ravi Ashwin inflict mankad under my watch, states Ricky Ponting

On March 25, 2019, in the fifth match of IPL 2019 between Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals, Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin sent the entire cricketing fraternity into meltdown through his actions. With Jos Buttler looking unstoppable for RR on 69*, chasing 181,  Ashwin did the unthinkable and mankaded the Englishman. The Indian received a lot of flak for his controversial move and although there were people who were on his side, the vast majority ripped into the then-KXIP skipper for mankading Buttler. 

While Ashwin has reaffirmed on Twitter and in interviews that he won’t think twice before mankading batsmen in the future, he just might have to hold back his instincts in the upcoming IPL season. Ricky Ponting, coach of Ashwin’s new club Delhi Capitals, has stated that he will have a conversation with the off-spinner to ensure that no mankad takes place under his watch. Ponting claimed that mankading goes against the spirit of the game and added that he wouldn’t want his players play the sport in an unspirited manner.

“I’ll be having a chat with him about , that’s the first thing I’ll do,” Ponting said in the Grade Cricketer’s podcast, reported Wisden.

“Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to afford to bring in this year. Look, he’s a terrific bowler, and he’s done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be others around the tournament who’ll think about doing this well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’.”

“So, that’s going to be a conversation and that’s going to be a hard conversation I will have to have with him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll take it on the chin. I think, even him, looking back now, probably he’d say it was within the rules and he’s right to do it, but this is not within the spirit of the game, not in the way I want, at least with the Delhi Capitals anyway.”

No rule has divided opinion amongst fans, players and experts as much as the mankad as while one half thinks mankading should not be ostracized because it’s a part of the rule book, the other argues that the action is inherently against the spirit of the game. While the main reason behind mankading is to stop non-strikers from getting an unfair head start, Ponting is of the opinion that such an outcome can be achieved by inflicting run-penalties on batsmen who are found guilty of not adhering to the rules.

“I think there’s ways that you can actually stop batsmen cheating like that,” he said. “If the bowler was to stop, and the batsman was a foot out of his crease for instance, why don’t you just penalise him some runs or something? Then they won’t do it again.

“You’ve only got to do that once at the start of a tournament, and then all the players see it, and you can guarantee the players won’t be fudging any ground from then on. I chatted to some of the match referees about it during last year’s IPL as well. If the umpires make a stance and do something to warn the batsman that they might be cheating, then that’s better than having the ugly incident of a mankad.”