Power Play confusion holds up play

It was obvious from the outside that there was plenty of confusion out in the middle when Ashish Nehra was about to bowl the 29th over of the innings, but no one was sure what exactly was happening.

It transpired that, before the start of the 25th over bowled by Ravindra Jadeja, New Zealand vice-captain Kyle Mills had told Mahendra Singh Dhoni and umpire Asad Rauf that he was taking the batting Power Play. When Nehra came on to bowl, he checked with Rauf if it was indeed the last Power Play over, which is when confusion set in.

Rauf insisted that the Kiwis hadn’t taken the batting Power Play, leading to a prolonged stoppage during which time both Mills and Dhoni put forward the same point of view. Some of the Indian fielders pointed out that the Power Play fields were in place even though Mills was slamming the bowling around, and it took nearly ten minutes of convincing before Rauf and his counterpart Asoka de Silva agreed that the batting Power Play had indeed been commissioned.

“A little bit of confusion is what happened,” Mills said as he spoke of the incident. “When Jadeja came on to bowl the 25th over, I told MS Dhoni and I also believed I told umpire Raufy that we were going to take the Power Play. MS nodded his yes, Raufy obviously didn’t hear. In the end, when Nehra came on to bowl the last over of the Power Play, Raufy still didn’t realise that we were in Power Play.

“I was tempted to say that I didn’t (take the Power Play), but that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the game!” he joked, in obvious reference to the slew of incidents that have marred this tournament.