Cricket, known as “The Gentleman’s Game’, may have taken a beating of late with some unsavoury incidents like the ‘obstructing the field’ dismissal of Ben Stokes, but it has seen its fair share of cricketers who have stayed true to the spirit of the game. Such players are revered by their fans and manage to draw applauds from even the opposition players when they take to the field.
The name of Sachin Tendulkar comes to everyone’s minds amongst the past cricketers while if you take into account the active players, South African ODI skipper AB de Villiers might top the list of many a cricket lover. His extraordinary cricket skills coupled with his exemplary behaviour on the field has seen him being touted as the player most fans would like to see in their team.
But, as they say, mistakes do happen. De Villiers has been on the wrong end a couple of times at least. Adding to the incident in which the now 31-year-old refused to walk in a match against India in spite of the ball taking a healthy edge of his bat to the slips, is this instance of blatant cheating when De Villiers wrongfully claimed a catch in a Test match against England.
De Villiers is one of the outstanding fielders in world cricket at present, but he seemed to have dropped a straightforward catch at slips on Day 1 of the 2nd Test match in South Africa’s tour of England in 2008. But De Villiers went ahead and claimed that the catch had been taken in spite of the ball clearly dropping to the ground and grazing the grass for quite some time before the South African could collect it.
Andrew Strauss was the batsman in question and though the visitors started celebrating, justice prevailed as the third umpire directed on-field umpire, Billy Bowden, to rule it not out after referring to the video replays.
Bad sportsman spirit from De Villiers and something the game’s lovers would wish he had never done no doubt. We usually refer to De Villiers as a gentleman who has amazed & entertained the crowd with his all-round cricket abilities and we wish the World’s No 1 ODI batsmen continues to enthrall us with his skills.
He recently broke Sourav Ganguly’s record of being the quickest to 8000 ODI runs by reaching the landmark playing in his 182nd innings, a whopping 18 better than the former Indian skipper, and we hope that he continues to make headlines for all the right reasons.
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