Image courtesy of: London Evening Standard
Ul-Haq believes Ramdin’s actions violated “the spirit of the game”
Pakistan captain Misbah ul-Haq has expressed his frustration towards West Indies wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin after he controversially claimed a catch behind the stumps, which was ruled not out after further reviews by the on-field and third umpire.
Ul-Haq noted that Ramdin’s actions were “not in the spirit of the game”.
The incident occurred in the ninth over when ul-Haq got a bottom edge off the bowling of West Indies pace bowler Kemar Roach which was claimed by Ramdin.
However, upon further review, it was deemed that Ramdin had in fact not taken the catch cleanly as the ball had slipped out of his gloves and fallen onto the pitch while he was diving forward.
But instead of making this known to the on-field umpires, Ramdin simply got up, threw the ball to the square leg umpire and joined his team-mates in their celebratory huddle.
“What can I say about that?” Misbah said after the match. “I think he should have told them what happened, but I don’t know what he was thinking at that time. I would not be very happy if my wicketkeeper did that.
“If we don’t know anything, then it’s fine, but if you know clearly that it’s not a catch, you should not claim that because it’s not in the spirit of the game.”
West Indies ODI captain Dwayne Bravo defended Ramdin, stating that the wicketkeeper did not feel he had been dishonest in any way.
“Denesh honestly thought he had control of the ball,” Bravo said. “By rights the umpire had another look and the replay showed he did not. So we don’t play the game like that. History shows we’ve never had anything negative against us unlike other teams.
“Unfortunately, he did not catch it. He’s a very honest player, and as I said, history shows if you check the records that we don’t have any stigma or negatives around us as a team. We have been true in our cricket careers and history has shown that we play the game in true spirit of the way it should be played. I don’t think we did something like this deliberately.”
Roach also admitted that he thought Ramdin had taken the catch cleanly.
“I thought he caught it. I really thought he caught it,” Roach said. “But the square umpire thought differently. That’s an issue for them to deal with, and we’ll see what plays out from here. You make mistakes. No one goes to drop a catch, but it happens, so you just have to accept it and move on and be professional about it.”