Sunil Gavaskar slams England for using placards to send out instructions

In the second T20I against South Africa last week, England captain Eoin Morgan received coded instructions from the dressing room. The incident sparked a debate among the cricket fraternity about fair play. Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar has expressed his displeasure about the practice.

Team management sending instructions to the captain has been a general practice for the last couple of decades. Sunil Gavaskar did not deny the objective but suggested that teams stick to the traditional way of using the 12th player for this purpose.

On the Cricket Connected Show on Star Sports, Sunil Gavaskar said:

“Ideally, as a captain, I would not like this thing to happen. If I was the captain, I would say, if you want to send a message about any field placing or a bowling change, then send the 12th man across with a bottle of water or anything."

England's analyst, Nathan Leamon was Morgan's instructor during the match. He held up placards with a combination of numbers and letters to send a message to the England captain.

Why I thought the signals were nonsense @TelegraphSport https://t.co/C4JKDmOxVq ... Unless it was a double bluff #SAvENG

— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) December 2, 2020

Morgan had opposed the allegations of wrongdoing by saying the codes were about maximizing the data available to the dressing room. He also clarified that they had cleared the action with the match officials. Sunil Gavaskar, though, wants to know the International Cricket Council's stance on the matter.

“I would like to know if the match referee had confirmed this with the ICC? Did they ask ICC? Has the cricket committee of the ICC sanctioned this, we don’t know this yet. This is happening for the first time,” Sunil Gavaskar explained.

Sunil Gavaskar brings up the issue of sending DRS instructions

Clean sweep! 😁 🙌 #SAvENG pic.twitter.com/TYgC8ZJczX

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) December 1, 2020

Leamon was also involved in a similar incident during a Pakistan Super League match with the Multan Sultans. Sunil Gavaskar expressed his apprehension regarding the use of these codes for helping a team in DRS calls.

"We were told that this type of strategy was also used during the Pakistan Super League and maybe this was the same person who adapted this technique," said Gavaskar.

"But I don’t believe this should be happening in cricket. The 2nd thing that is worrisome is, during a situation involving DRS, will there be a code there as well to help with the decision of taking the DRS?” asked Gavaskar.

This kind of help from the dressing room is illegitimate in cricket and has led to controversies before. There was a similar controversy during Australia's tour to India in 2017 when Steve Smith was caught on camera asking for help from the dressing room.