There is an old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”, but this surely did not gel well with the West Indian captain Brian Lara; who completely cracked under the Dhoni Dhamaka pressure.
Lara who has been praised for his captaincy (off late) after his team’s fantastic win over the Indians in the ODI series, seems to have lost his cool in the on-going Test Series.
Yesterday, the play was held up for about 10 minutes towards the close of the India innings after standing umpires Simon Taufel of Australia and Pakistani Asad Rauf, as well as the television umpire, Billy Doctrove, could not determine whether Daren Ganga had taken the catch cleanly as the big-hitting Dhoni tried for a fourth consecutive six off left-arm spinner Dave Mohammed.
In spite of being adjudged ‘not-out’ by the umpires, Brain Lara persisted and pressured M. S. Dhoni to walk off.
The actual details were disclosed at the Press Conference, where Dhoni gave a brief account of his interaction with the West Indian captain. He said..
“I talked to the umpires and they said they were not really sure and would be asking the third umpire. (Then) Brian came up to me and he said I am taking charge of my players so I think you should walk off.
He said whatever they say it will be the truth, so then I decided I should walk off from the field. That means he was taking the responsibility of his players and he said he was speaking the truth and was backing his players. He came late to me.”
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Brian Lara removing his frustration on Umpire Asad Rauf |
And this is not the end; our man Lara also dumped his frustration on the field umpire Asad Rauf. Once Rahul Dravid hinted his players for a declaration, Lara angrily snatched the ball from Asad Rauf’s hand and walked off.
Though everything apparently has been settled and the players from both the teams simply want to concentrate on the game at hand, it’s just totally sad to see a player of Lara’s caliber behaving in such an un-sporting manner.
What sort of example is he setting for the young West Indians?
On the other hand, Dhoni surely walked back as a bigger and better sportsman.
[...] Siddharth at CricInfo gives out the exact details. Pratyush has video clippings of the incident. Sakshi mentions how Lara crumbled under Dhoni's pressure. worma @ Cricket 24×7 is pondering between the official and unofficial aspects of the drama. Tags: | cricket | test cricket | indian cricket | [...]
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