Ambati Rayudu upset with umpires' decision of changing their call at the end of the innings

Ambati Rayudu is again in the news for wrong reasons. The flamboyant batsman has been involved in an argument with the umpires and the opposition skipper during a league game of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in Visakhapatnam. Rayudu, Hyderabad’s skipper questioned the Umpires on their error as they added two runs to the opposition team, Karnataka’s total.

What really happened?

Earlier, during the very second over of the match, Mehdi Hassan touched the boundary ropes while fielding the ball at the midwicket boundary. With the umpires not noticing the fielding faux, Vinay Kumar asked the umpires to add the two runs at the end of the first inning. Following a long discussion of nine minutes, Umpires awarded Karnataka with the two runs. Adding two runs to the total at the end of the innings made Rayudu very furious and the Hyderabad skipper went on angrily to question the umpires.

However, after a long delay, the second innings started and Hyderabad fell short of Karnataka’s total by two runs. Highly disappointed by the umpires, Rayudu and his team asked for a Super over and did not leave the field. On the other hand, officially Karnataka was declared as the winner. With the Hyderabad team standing their ground for a decent amount of time, the next scheduled game had to be cut down to a 13-over clash.

We just wanted to play the super-over: Rayudu

A disappointed skipper, Ambati Rayudu said that his team wasn’t protesting but they just wanted to play a super-over, which would be a fair deal. Speaking on the bizarre incident, Ruyudu stated his version. “There was some confusion in the middle at the start of our innings. What I went and told the umpire was ‘sir you cannot change the score, we are batting for 204 as our target’.

“That is exactly what I told him and he said ‘we’ll see it at the end, let the match start. The match was stopped for nine minutes, before the second innings. They had no business to stop the match once the target was declared. Then, what we said was we were playing for 204, and that was my exact words,” he was quoted by Cricbuzz.

“At the end, we went and asked to start the Super Over. That is exactly our point of contention. We never even thought of stopping the second match, that has got nothing to do with us. We were insisting that our match was not complete, we still have to play the Super Over. That is exactly why we went to the middle, we were actually going to warm up then,” the Hyderabad captain added.

We were playing for 204, Rayudu says

“I’m sure of the rules. If he had changed immediately then it would have been perfect. Even if somebody gets out and you come inside and see that it’s not out, you don’t call the person back. Even in case of a no-ball not correctly called, you cannot call somebody back or add the scores. I don’t know what has happened but we were playing for 204. That is exactly what I wanted to tell and we were waiting for the Super Over which never happened,” Ambati Rayudu stated.

Karnataka sealed the game and kept their chances alive in the tournament. Karnataka won the game by two runs. On the other hand, with all the fuss, Rayudu and Co might have to face the consequences. Due to the confusion, the next match was severely shortened.

Brief Scores: Karnataka won by 2 runs

Karnataka – 205/5 (K Gowtham 57 of 31; Ravi Kiran 2-33)
Hyderabad – 203/9 (A Reddy 70 of 29; Stuart Binny 3-29)

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