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Dambulla: Kyle Mills' wonderful but futile pyrotechnics on Wednesday were helped along by MS Dhoni setting his fields thinking the Batting Powerplay was on, though there was no signal from the umpire.
It was only in the 29th over, with Mills having already hammered the bowlers all over the park, that Ashish Nehra went over to umpire Asad Rauf to clarify whether his over was the last of the Batting Powerplays. A bewildered Rauf replied he hadn't signalled Powerplay in the first place, leading to a 10-minute hold up, at the end of which it was decided that the Powerplays had indeed been taken from the 25 to the 29th over!
So what really happened? "There was a confusion. Mills came and told me he was taking the Batting Powerplay and I arranged the field accordingly and forgot to look at the umpire. When we asked in the fifth over the umpire said the Powerplay was not even on. But Mills stood by his word and it was sorted out," Dhoni said at the match presentation.
Mills agreed. "I told Dhoni I was taking the Batting Powerplay when Jadeja came on to bowl (in the 25th over). I told the umpire too but it seems he did not hear or understand. It was a communication thing. In the future I'll make sure the umpire hears and signals."
Mills could have cashed in on the confusion had he said he wanted another five overs of restrictions, but thankfully there were to be no further breaches of the spirit of cricket here.
The Powerplays led to some frenzied hitting with the field up and yielded 43 runs, with Mills latching on to almost all the bowlers. In the end, it was all time for a good laugh as Ross Taylor enquired, "Is Raufi (Asad Rauf) coming to answer these questions?"
This tournament has already seen one too many freakish incidents, starting with the no-ball fracas, then the Sangakkara-McCullum tiff and a half-an-hour ban on Mills himself for landing a warm-up ball on the crease. Any more to come?
