Ricky Ponting To Disallow Ravichandran Ashwin From Mankading In IPL 2020

Delhi Capital head coach and Australia great Ricky Ponting believes mankading is not in the spirit of the game and will discuss about the same with senior India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin. While playing for KXIP, Ashwin found himself in the thick of the things after ‘mankading’ Jos Buttler during an Indian Premier League (IPL) match between Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the last edition.

However, Ponting will disallow Ashwin to do the same in the upcoming season of IPL 2020, slated to take place in UAE. In a podcast, the 2003 World Cup winning captain, said that he will have a chat with Ashwin ahead of the season. He also added that Ashwin is a terrific bowler and has contributed highly for the side but should refrain from doing such act.

“I’ll be having a chat with him about [mankad], that’s the first thing I’ll do,” Ponting said while speaking on The Grade Cricketer Podcast.

“Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to bring in this year. Look, he’s a terrific bowler, and he’s done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be others around the tournament who’ll think about doing this well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’.”

According to the rules mankading is well within the limits. The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) rule book, the 41.16 Law says: Non-striker leaving his/her ground early states, “If the non-striker is out of his/her ground from the moment the ball comes into play to the instant when the bowler would normally have been expected to release the ball, the bowler is permitted to attempt to run him/her out. Whether the attempt is successful or not, the ball shall not count as one in the over.

“If the bowler fails in an attempt to run out the non-striker, the umpire shall call and signal Dead ball as soon as possible.”