Inzamam-ul-Haq Alleges India of Ball-Tampering in Match Against Australia
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India’s convincing 26-run victory over Australia in the T20 World Cup Super Eight match on Monday has soured when Inzamam-ul-Haq leveled accusations of ball-tampering against Rohit Sharma and his group. This resulted in India’s qualification for the semi-final. The former captain of Pakistan, Inzamam, asserts that during Australia’s innings, India’s Arshdeep Singh, a left-arm fast, was able to produce reverse-swing because of anything done to the ball.
With a 3/37, Arshdeep was the best bowler for India. In the opening over of the innings, he removed David Warner, and in the eighteenth over, he removed Tim David and Matthew Wade. However, even as Arshdeep embodied precession throughout his second stint of two overs, Inzamam felt uneasy and advised the authorities to “keep their eyes open.”
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“You have to acknowledge that the ball was swinging in the opposite direction when Arshdeep Singh was delivering the fifteenth over. Is it not too soon to see the new ball reversing? By the 12th or 13th over, the ball was ready to reverse. Umpires ought to be vigilant. We’ve done some significant work on the ball if Arshdeep Singh can reverse swing it, given our knowledge of the technique,” Inzamam stated during the ‘World Cup Hungama’ Show on Pakistan’s 24 News channel.
Previous Accusations
The Indian squad and its players have previously faced accusations of ball-tampering. When match referee Mike Denness punished Sachin Tendulkar for one game in 2001 after cameras captured footage of the legendary player scuffing the ball’s seam during India’s Test match against South Africa in Port Elizabeth, Indian cricket fans were shocked. Shahid Afridi, the former captain of Pakistan, was found guilty of ball tampering and suspended for two Twenty20 international matches outside of India. During an ODI against Australia at the WACA in 2010, Afridi even bit the ball, a move that was caught on video by television.
The 2018 sandpaper gate incident, in which the Australian team of Steve Smith, David Warner, and Cameron Bancroft was heavily reprimanded for rubbing sandpaper on the ball during the Cape Town Test against South Africa, has to be the most notorious of them all.
Inzamam Justification
Returning to Inzamam’s claims, it is even more puzzling that the former Pakistani batter used Jasprit Bumrah to defend the ball’s reverse-swinging rather than Arshdeep. While it was too late to undo the damage, Inzamam attempted to deflect some of the blame by pointing out that the ball might have behaved as it did as a result of being smashed by players like Mitchell Marsh and Travis Head, who both threatened to take the game away from India.
“The issue with reverse swing is that I can understand if Bumrah performs it—his motion is that way. It is necessary to position the ball such that it reverses. Given the pitch, I can see how the ball may have been struck a lot. It’s possible that the ball was struck after bouncing off the stands. However, Inzamam said, “whatever was occurring could have been closely observed.”
