What a cricketing contest one witnessed at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Monday. The Royal Challengers Bangalore were up against the Lucknow Super Giants in an Indian Premier League (IPL) face-off and even though the home team scored 212 runs batting first, it proved to be insufficient in the end as the visitors reached their target on the last ball of the match with just 1-wicket in the end.
The edge of the seat thriller had its own ups and downs and now a viral clip of the match has seemed to cause a bit of a controversy. In a video doing the rounds on social media, senior leg-spinner Amit Mishra can be seen applying saliva to the ball before bowling the first ball of his spell. While this was a perfectly-legal practice before COVID-19 pandemic, it now stands banned by the ICC. Despite a couple of years having passed since the change of rules, Mishra applied saliva to the ball.
Interestingly, Mishra got the wicket of Virat Kohli in the very same over. While the first two balls of his over went for singles, on the third ball, he got Kohli caught in the deep for 61 off 44 balls with the team's score at 96/1.
Here is the video:
LSG bowlers could only pick 2 wickets such was the dominance of RCB batters. While Mishra picked one of the two wickets to fall, he was only trusted with 2 overs which went for 18 runs. Mark Wood was the other wicket-taker for side which he produced in the last over, getting rid of Glenn Maxwell. Overall, Wood conceded 32 runs in his 4 overs.
In response though LSG, despite a poor start, reached their target on the last ball. Nicholas Pooran (62 off 19) and Marcus Stoinis (65 off 30) played pivotal roles but in the end they had to run a bye to pass the finish line in a dramatic final over.