Ranji Trophy: Abhinav Mukund’s unfortunate run out rings a Bell

The Tamil Nadu opener was in the midst of a game-changing knock against Railways, and had just reached his century when he was adjudged run out even as he was celebrating the landmark. He hit the ball to deep square-leg, reached his ton with the second run, and had seemingly turned for the third, when he thought the ball had crossed the boundary, and began to celebrate. Non-striker Kaushik Gandhi had reached the striker’s end, but Mukund had his bat raised towards his teammates in the pavilion. Even as Mukund was soaking up his moment, ’keeper Mahesh Rawat lobbed the ball to the bowler, who in turn removed the bails.

The umpires Vineet Kulkarni (standing at square-leg) and his colleague Rohan Pandit, checked with the TV umpire to see if Mukund had reached the other end. He hadn’t, and was given out.

“I feel so sheepish about the whole thing!” Mukund laughs. “I thought it had gone for four. It was also the last ball of the over, and I was celebrating. I realise it was my mistake, it wasn’t a dead-ball I guess. I could have reached the other end comfortably. I was batting well, and it was an important situation in the game,” he told The Indian Express. His exit left Tamil Nadu at 161 for two, and Gandhi too got out two runs later, before Dinesh Karthik pulled off a counter-attacking knock to take them to a commanding total.

The Bell incident
At Trent Bridge, in 2011, on the last ball before tea, Mukund played a crucial role in Ian Bell’s run out. At the end of the first innings, England were trailing by 67 runs but Bell’s 137 dragged them towards a position of respectability, before drama unfolded.

Bell had flicked it to deep square-leg, and had taken three runs, before he jogged down the track and continued to walk towards Morgan, who hadn’t turned for the fourth. In his mind, Bell thought it was a four — Praveen Kumar had made a tumbling stop near the boundary, and the nonchalant manner in which he crossed back over the rope and picked up the ball, made him think it was a boundary.

“From Praveen’s body language, it looked like that had gone for four,” Bell would say later. Here is where Mukund enters in the story. Wicketkeeper MS Dhoni had gone some way towards square-leg to collect the throw, and he just instinctively lobbed the ball to Mukund who was near the stumps. He calmly took off the bails, and appealed.
“I felt the ball had not crossed the boundary, removed the bails, looked at Dhoni, and appealed. Couple of others also did, and of course it was also the last ball of the over before the tea interval,” Mukund relived that experience on Monday.

During the break, England’s captain Andrew Strauss and coach Andy Flower came to the Indian dressing room where Duncan Fletcher was the India coach. At the end of the day, Rahul Dravid described what happened in the room.

“Captain Dhoni and Fletcher convened the meeting during the tea interval. There was a feeling of unanimity that we should reinstate Bell, as getting him out in that manner would be in contravention to the spirit of the game.”

Mukund, however, saw the humour in being involved in both the incidents. Unlike, the Indians, the Railways, led by Karn Sharma, didn’t recall him.

Incidentally, six months after the Trent Bridge Test, Ravi Ashwin had mankaded Lahiru Thirimanne in an ODI in Australia, after having already issuing a warning once for straying out of the crease. However, when the umpires asked whether they wanted to recall him, Virender Sehwag, who was captaining in absence of MS Dhoni, had agreed.

Later, Sehwag would say that the move was prompted because they were worried about criticism. “Because if we appealed and the umpire had given him out, then somebody will criticise that, you know, that was not in the spirit of the game.” Asked if it wasn’t soft to let the batsmen carry on, he agreed: “It’s soft, but that’s the way we are”.

Railways weren’t, and Mukund had to relive his Bell experience in a different light, this time around.