Amidst all the cricketing glitz and glam that India played on Tuesday, it was an action to savour as there was dynamics, joys, thrill and most importantly some intense drama that involved Mohammed Shami mankading Dasun Shanaka for 98, a move that was later taken down by Rohit Sharma and eventually the Lankan skipper went onto storm a century.
Former Sri Lankan captain, Angelo Matthews praised Rohit’s decision, lauding the fact that not all captains in the world would be magnanimous enough to have done this but at the end of it all, the crowd didn’t fail to point out that it was also a legitimised dismissal.
Matthews said, “Not many captains would do this but hats off to @ImRo45 for withdrawing the appeal even though the law says so! Displaying great sportsmanship.” Again, this post was met with substantially polarised reactions all across the micro-blogging platform.
Indian captain Rohit Sharma opened up in detail about the entire incident in the post-match conference, adding, “I had no idea Shami had done that. When he went up in an appeal. Again, he (Shanaka) is batting on 98. The way he batted was brilliant. We got to give it to him. We cannot get him out like that. We wanted to get him out the way we thought we would get him out. But that was not something that we thought of. But again, hats off to him, he played really well.”
India was absolutely phenomenal in terms of their exploits against Sri Lanka in the ODI series opener and the batting and the bowling was also pretty disciplined that forced Sri Lanka into retreat until Dasun Shanaka managed to put up a show to remrmber even though he ran short of overs and support at the other end.
