Bangladesh’s World Cup group stage win against Sri Lanka in Delhi on Monday was engulfed in controversy after Angelo Mathews became the first player in 146 years of international cricket to be “timed out”.
It ended up being the highlight of the three-wicket win that took Bangladesh to seventh in the table. Sri Lanka refused to shake hand with their opponents after the game, Mathews calling captain Shakib Al Hasan “disgraceful”.
The incident occurred in the 25th over of Sri Lanka’s innings when Mathews walked to the middle after the fall of the fourth wicket. The all-rounder discovered his helmet had a broken chinstrap after he stood guard and motioned for him to pull out a spare.
However, World Cup rules state that a batsman “shall be ready to receive the ball” within two minutes of the fall of the previous wicket.. After this time, Shakib, the then bowler, surprised Mathews and the spectators by asking for a timeout.
Umpire Marais Erasmus twice asked Shakib if he really wished to proceed with the appeal and the answer came back in the affirmative. This left a shocked Mathews looking for a duck without facing the ball. The 36-year-old walked off and threw his helmet to the ground in disgust as he made his way into the Sri Lankan dugout.
Unrepentant after helping his team chase down 280 to move into one of the eight Champions Trophy 2025 qualification spots, Shakib said: “I was at war and I had to make a decision to ensure my team won. Right or wrong, there will be debates. But if it’s within the rules, I don’t mind taking the risk.”
Mathews said: “It was disgraceful from Shakib and Bangladesh. If you want to play cricket like this and come down to this level, then something is wrong, drastically.”
Although one of the nine methods of dismissal in cricket, the timeout has largely remained the stuff of nightmares for players at all levels rather than a reality. There have been six instances in over 61,000 first-class matches, with Mathews becoming the first batsman in history to lose a wicket in a List A match.
MCC Law 40.1 states that a batsman has three minutes after the fall of a wicket to face his first ball, but ICC regulations, which take precedence over laws at international level, state that there must be two. At the change of innings, fourth umpire Adrian Holdstock said that time had expired before Mathews discovered a problem with his helmet.
However, the rarity of such discharges and the fact that they involved defective protective equipment caused a backlash. Waqar Younis, the former Pakistan international who was commentating at the time, was among those who questioned whether it was in the “spirit of the game”, a sentiment echoed by other players past and present on social media.
