IPL 2019: AB de Villiers Comes Out in Support of Ravichandran Ashwin

Ever since Ravichandran Ashwin ‘Mankaded’ Jos Buttler, the cricketing experts and the former cricketers have criticised him severely for his actions. Though what Ashwin did was within the laws of the game it was definitely not within the spirit of the game. However former South African superstar AB de Villiers has come out in support of Ravichandran Ashwin. He believes that Ashwin was well within his rights to run out Jos Buttler as it is within the laws of the game.

AB de Villiers who is a perfect example of sportsman felt bad for Jos Buttler as he was not trying to9 steal a single under any stress of imagination. However, De Villiers in his column for the Times of India wrote that what Ravichandran Ashwin did was nothing wrong and he was within the laws to run out Buttler.

“I felt sorry for Buttler because he wasn’t trying to steal a run, and Ashwin did nothing wrong because he was operating within the laws,” De Villiers wrote in his column for the Times of India on Thursday.

“It’s still a grey area, and Law 41.16 needs to be clarified. Either running a batsman out at the non-striker’s end is legal or it isn’t — can somebody please decide.” Though de Villiers remained diplomatic, many commentators took a dig at Ashwin during the match between KKR and Kings XI Punjab. KKR went onto win the match quite convincingly in the end.

Meanwhile, Royal Challengers Bangalore play their 2^nd match of the tournament today against the three-time champions Mumbai Indians. They should look to get back to winning ways in their home ground. In the tournament opener, Bangalore was skittled out for just 70 runs. Both de Villiers and Virat Kohli was dismissed early which never really allowed RCB to press on the accelerator.  Eventually, Chennai Super Kings coasted to a 7 wickets victory with 16 deliveries to spare.

 “We are playing under pressure not only because, as ever, we want to excite our own supporters but also because of the disappointing defeat in our opening match against CSK. That’s no problem. We embrace the pressure. This is why we play the game,” De Villiers wrote.

 “Our preparations this week have focussed on nothing more clever or complicated than hard work. On Tuesday, guided — and goaded — by head coach Gary Kirsten, we focussed almost entirely on fitness drills.”

AB de Villiers further commented that skipper Virat Kohli might not look to tinker with the playing combination despite getting a thrashing at the hands of CSK in the season opener.

“There are unlikely to be many changes in our team to play MI. We underperformed in Chennai but the balance feels right and, very often, it is consistency in selection that enables a team to build momentum. That’s what we need right now… consistency and momentum, and an opening home victory over MI will get our campaign up and running,” he explained.

Meanwhile coming back to the Mankading incident, Ravichandran Ashwin was trolled severely on social media after a photo went viral which saw Andre Russell just in his delivery stride and Mayank Agarwal had already left the crease which wasn’t even the case with Jos Buttler. Here the picture clearly shows that Agarwal had moved quite a bit before even Russell came into his delivery stride. However, Russell wanted to dismiss him by winning the battle of bat and ball.