Yuzvendra Chahal mistakenly walked out to bat at the fall of the eighth wicket in the first T20I between West Indies and India on August 3. He was on his way back to the dressing-room when the umpires intervened and forced him to bat at No.10, applying Law 25.2.
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The West Indies got off to a victorious start in the five-match T20I series, beating India by four runs in a relatively low-scoring thriller at the Brian Lara Stadium in Trinidad.
Batting first after winning the toss, the hosts put up 149 runs on the board, thanks largely to a 34-ball 41 by Nicholas Pooran and a 32-ball 48 by captain Rovman Powell. It seemed a competitive total, for the spinners had been able to get the ball to grip on to the surface.
India got off to a poor start in the chase, losing their second wicket for 28 runs in the fifth over. Debutant Tilak Varma then hit two sixes off the first three balls he faced in international cricket. He scored 39 off 22 and laid a solid platform.
It was not to be. Hardik Pandya, Sanju Samson, and Axar Patel all faltered, and India were left to get 10 off the last over with Kuldeep Yadav and Arshdeep Singh at the crease.
When Romario Shepherd knocked Kuldeep’s stumps over with the first ball, Yuzvendra Chahal walked out at No.10, ahead of the debutant Mukesh Kumar.
Chahal had covered more than half the distance to the crease when Umran Malik, a substitute handed over a message to Chahal, which prompted him to run back to the dressing room.
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The Indian team apparently wanted Mukesh to go out at No.10. By the time Chahal crossed the boundary ropes, Mukesh had been up and ready to walk out, but the umpires called Chahal back, enforcing Law 25.2 which deals with the commencement of innings of a batter: “The innings of the first two batters, and that of any new batter on the resumption of play after a call of Time, shall commence at the call of Play. At any other time, a batter’s innings shall be considered to have commenced when that batter first steps onto the field of play.”
Since Chahal had already stepped into the field of play, his innings had technically commenced, and India could not have called him back for a different batter, unless they were willing to retire him out.
Chahal took a single off the first and last ball he faced. Mukesh eventually walked out at No.11 to face the last ball of the innings. With six runs required, he got only a single off a perfect yorker by Shepherd.
