Twitter divided with opinions after R Ashwin demands free ball for batsmen backing up

After Ricky Ponting triggered the Spirit of Cricket debate by revealing that he would have a hard conversation with Ravichandran Ashwin regarding his view on Mankading, Dinesh Karthik came back with a reply that the debate itself falls on the grey area and stated that it is unfair to link the dismissal to the spirit of the game or call it ‘Mankading’ as it is permitted by laws of the game.

Quite an innovative decision, Ashwin made his point quite succinctly and rightfully so, he garnered support from many former cricketers. WV Raman quoted dialogue from ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ to say, “Echoing the famous line of Eli Wallach, ‘when you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk’. Similarly, ‘when you have to stay in the crease, stay in, don’t walk out’,” Raman said.

“I think ‘spirit of the game’ is so vague. Is it in the spirit of the game to not walk when one knows he/she is out or to appeal to dismiss a batter when one knows he/ she is not out? It’s not – yet that is accepted and practised by nearly everybody. My feeling is that more bowers don’t do it because of the backlash that it creates …the negative publicity and the drama,” Rohan added.

Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore, however, has a viewpoint that Mankading is a “harsh” dismissal and cricket bodies should look to dock runs for batsmen backing up. Harsha Bhogle added that the rule should be made simple and subjectiveness should be taken off the block.

“I think the rule should be simple and take away any subjective element like ‘normal delivery position’ and just say ‘non-striker stays in till the ball is released’,” Bhogle added after that.