Did Delhi Capitals (DC) captain Axar Patel punish Abhishek Sharma for a wrong DRS (Decision Review System) call? Defending 184 against the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, DC had already struck early.
Abhishek Porel’s wrong DRS call
Mukesh Yadav had sent Rachin Ravindra back to the hut in the second over. Then in the next over, Mitchell Starc sent CSK captain Ruturaj Gaikwad packing. Capitals were bossing the game. A couple of balls later, Starc bowled an absolute beauty. An inswinging yorker caught Vijay Shankar by surprise, and it was struck on the pad.
It looked like the ball had hit the pad and bat. Starc was excited, and so was the DC captain. But wicketkeeper Abhishek Porel told Axar that Shankar had hit the ball. When the third over got over, replays on the big screen showed that Shankar had missed the ball and it had struck his pad before taking the toe.
KL Rahul takes over as DC wicketkeeper
Had DC taken the DRS, it would have hit the middle stump. CSK would have been 20/3 in 2.5 overs. They would have virtually won the match. But that didn’t happen. Weirdly enough, in the fourth over, we saw that KL Rahul was the one who was keeping the wickets. Abhishek wasn’t to be found. He had gone off the field entirely.
It’s safe to assume that while Axar and DC were disappointed with Porel’s call, they wouldn’t have taken him off as the wicketkeeper. He had failed to complete a take against Starc a ball prior (3.4 overs), and it had hit him on the fingers. The logical reason is that Porel may have hurt himself, and therefore Rahul took over the gloves.
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