‘How about a bravery award to the bowler‘- R Ashwin’s cheeky reply to Sam Billings over his take on Deepti Sharma's run out

The third and final Women’s ODI between India and England had a controversial ending as all-rounder Deepti Sharma ran out Charlotte Dean at the non-striker end for backing up too far. The dismissal did not impress many of the England cricketers. 

Sam Billings had his say on the spirit of the game and he tweeted "There’s surely not a person who has played the game that thinks this is acceptable? Just not cricket. Well within the laws but not in the spirit. Just my opinion the law should be changed back to a warning system or penalty runs for excessive backing up for eg. Safe to say a few people disagree".  

However, R Ashwin came to the rescue of Deepti as the off-spinner, who himself faced a lot of criticism on social media and from the experts for running out few batters in the similar manner, took a cheeky dig at Billings on Twitter. 

Here's the tweet from R Ashwin

In fact that’s a great idea. How about awarding that wicket to the bowler for “ presence of mind” under immense pressure and of course knowing the social stigma that he/she would have to deal with post doing it. How about a bravery award to go with it too @ICC ? https://t.co/9PqqetnnGw

— Ashwin 🇮🇳 (@ashwinravi99) September 25, 2022

“In fact that’s a great idea. How about awarding that wicket to the bowler for “ presence of mind” under immense pressure and of course knowing the social stigma that he/she would have to deal with post doing it. How about a bravery award to go with it too @ICC?“ Ashwin tweeted.

Meanwhile, the ICC had announced on September 20 the change in rules on running out the non-striker which stated “The Playing Conditions follow the Laws in moving this method of effecting a run out from the ‘Unfair Play’ section to the ‘Run out’ section”.