England vs India: Indian bowlers are not playing in ‘Spirit of the Game’, says David Willey

Showing resentment over the style of bowling of Indian bowlers, England all-rounder David Willey has said that Indian bowlers are not following the ‘Spirit of the Game’. He alleged that the act of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kuldeep Yadav of not completing their deliveries after running is not fair and is not in the ‘Spirit of the Game’.

During the 1st T20I match between India and England at Old Trafford, Manchester, it happened three times during Indian bowling innings when bowlers chose not to bowl after completing their actions. While Kuldeep Yadav did it once, Bhuvneshwar did it twice during the final overs of the innings.

“I think he [Bhuvneshwar] was looking to see what I was going to do. They did that a few times. The spinners did it a couple of times. I’m not sure what the rules are on that. I don’t particularly like it. I don’t think it is necessarily in the spirit of cricket. It’s not my job to comment on that too much on what they should or shouldn’t be doing. Personally, I don’t think I’d do that. I don’t think it is great,” Willey said during addressing the media.

However, opting to not bowl after completing the running is quite a common practice among bowlers and is happening since a long time in the game of cricket. After watching a batsman shuffle across the crease, bowlers sometimes choose not to ball after completing the run up. In such cases, a dead ball signal is given by the umpire. Although, this makes a batsman lose his concentration, there are no particular rules regarding how many times a bowler can do this in an over.

While David Willey criticised this act by bowlers, Indian batsman Kl Rahul supported this alleging that it one of the tactics used by bowlers. “It will frustrate me as a batsman, it did, I guess, frustrate the English batsmen but the margin for error for bowlers in T20 cricket is very little so whatever tactics they can come up with and whatever they try to do to upset the batsmen is only fair. You know you can do it as a bowler, you can run a batsman out, he was taking few strides too many and it is a long boundary and if he gets that much start he can keep rotating the strike and keep getting two runs which will frustrate the bowler in return, so it’s only fair,” he said.