England captain Jos Buttler has urged for there to be more clarity around some of cricket’s quirkier rules after a bizarre ending to the India-Pakistan thriller on Sunday.
There was controversy in the final over when Virat Kohli was bowled on a free hit, with India picking up three runs after the ball ricocheted off the stumps past the fielder at short third man.
The runs proved to be crucial as India hit the winning runs off the final ball of the match.
“Yeah, it’s a tough one to work out, I think, and there are a lot of laws of cricket which are quite unique,” Buttler said.
“You know … it’s far from perfect.
“Say the third umpire calls the front foot no-ball, you might get caught at deep mid-wicket and cross for a run and then you get called back, and then you actually go back on strike and it’s just a dead ball, whereas if the umpire had called no-ball on the field, you wouldn’t have been out and you’d have scored an extra run.
“So I think that’s maybe something else that is not quite ideal.
“I don’t think the review system is perfect.
“Say you need one to win in the World Cup final; you get given out LBW and you cross, and they’ve completed a run, and then you review it, you’re not out, it’s just a dot ball. So I don’t think that’s quite ideal, either.
“I think whether it’s a dead ball after a free hit is – again, if you got caught – if you hit it and got caught and run two, that’s fine, but then off the stumps whether you should be able to run or not, I don’t know.
“I think whether all of those things can be cleaned up a little bit would be beneficial.
“But where that ball goes off the stumps, as we saw, India managed to score three runs off that ball, which is a huge swing in the match.
“For them, they’d obviously be like, ‘yep, that’s a perfect rule’, but for Pakistan, it obviously hurts them. Hopefully, it doesn’t affect us.”
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