Three days on from the incident which occured as Chennai Super Kings secured their place in Sunday’s final, debate is still raging over Dhoni’s tactics towards the end of the match. In the 16th over of Gujarat Titans’ chase, Dhoni opted to bring Matheesha Pathirana back into the attack, after the pace bowler had left the field for eight minutes earlier on in the innings.

As Pathirana was about to run in to bowl his first ball the umpire stopped him, as there were still four minutes left on the clock before he could bowl again. As Dhoni remonstrated with umpire Chris Gaffaney, the time continued to tick down and by the end of the discussion, enough time had elapsed to allow Pathirana to bowl.

The incident was discussed by Sunil Gavaskar and Harsha Bhogle on commentary at the time, and criticism has since been levelled at Dhoni for alleged time wasting. Harper is the latest to enter the conversation, speaking to mid-day.com.

“Dhoni wasted time to allow his preferred bowling option to deliver the vital 16th over,” said Harper. “That’s the only conclusion that I can draw from that disappointing spectacle. The issue for me is the lack of respect shown for the spirit of cricket and for the directions of the umpires. There were other [bowling] options for the captain, but they were ignored.

“Maybe, some people are bigger than the law or in this case, the spirit of cricket. It’s always disappointing to see the lengths that some people will go to in order to win.”

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Harper also recalled an incident during his own career when he was officiating an India Test match in 2007. Rahul Dravid was captaining India when Sachin Tendulkar was unable to come in at No.4 because he still had six minutes to wait after leaving the field. Of that incident, Harper said: “Stalling for time was not an option for Dravid. However, I don’t believe it was a tactic he would have ever considered. It just wasn’t cricket [that mattered] and there were standards in that era.”

Dhoni and Harper have clashed in the media before. In 2011 after an India Test match against West Indies which Harper officiated, the then-India captain said of some of the on-field decision made during the match: “If the correct decisions were made the game would have finished much earlier and I would have been in the hotel by now.”

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Harper re-visited those comments in an interview with Asianet Newsable in 2020, saying: “They [India] would have been back [at the hotel] earlier if the Indian fieldsmen had taken their catches as well. Sometimes I wished I could have attended those post-match press conferences on a regular basis in order to set the record straight.”

CSK will play the winner of tonight’s (May 26) Qualifier between Gujarat Titans and Mumbai Indians at the Sardar Patel Stadium, Ahmedabad.