After facing heat for throat-slashing celebration, Haris Rauf unveils new 'adaab' celebration in BBL

The Big Bash League League is an excellent platform for Asian cricketers to display their style of cricket in front of a crowd. The crowd always loves to see some character in players and one way to show that is by celebrating a milestone in a unique manner. Therefore, many bowlers have become legendary in the way they celebrated their wickets. Shahid Afridi’s hand gesture towards the sky had become quite iconic with the passage of time.

Another Pakistani pace bowler Haris Rauf has made quite an impression on the crowd Down Under with his pace and theatrics while playing for Melbourne Stars, first as a replacement for Dale Steyn and now after Steyn has completed his commitment. Haris Rauf has made an amazing contribution to Stars’ campaign in the tournament. He left an indelible mark with his performance against Sydney Thunder.

Haris Rauf takes a brilliant hat-trick, celebrates in sedated style

Haris faced criticism on social media after he celebrated a wicket in a prior match by doing a ‘throat-slashing’ wicket celebration. Incidentally, he was playing against Thunder on January 2 and had picked three wickets when he flaunted the wicket ‘throat slashing’ celebration repeatedly.

This was deemed extremely aggressive by many viewers and they vented out on Twitter against it. People felt that with younger fans watching the BBL, such behaviour would not be what they want their kids to see.

It seems that Rauf got the message from social media or the Stars’ management as after picking his first wicket against Thunder, he used the ‘adaab’ greeting, something which is common in Islam culture, to celebrate his wicket. Rauf went onto pick a hat-trick against Thunder, which was the second of the day after Rashid Khan achieved the same feat for Adelaide Strikers against the Sydney Sixers.

Rauf unveils his new wicket celebration:

The Celebration … LOL pic.twitter.com/FR2cq8ySMD

— Taimoor Zaman (@taimoor_ze) January 8, 2020

Melbourne Stars won the toss and put Thunder into bat first. Matthew Gilkes scored 41, Callum Ferguson made 35, while Usman Khawaja made 33 runs as Thunder posted 145/5 on the scoreboard. Haris Rauf came in to bowl the last over of the innings and scalped the wickets of Matthew Gilkes, Callum Ferguson, and Daniel Sams.

Here is the video of Rauf’s hat-trick:

An iconic BBL moment.

Enjoy Haris Rauf's hat-trick! #BBL09 pic.twitter.com/Qm8iYrIRfA

— KFC Big Bash League (@BBL) January 8, 2020