Ravichandran Ashwin lambasted Rishabh Pant for withdrawing a non-striker end run-out appeal, made by Digvesh Rathi. The bowler appealed for the dismissal, but the umpire eventually ruled it not out. Soon after that, Pant withdrew the appeal, which created controversy.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru defeated Lucknow Super Giants by six wickets to confirm their berth in Qualifier 1 of the ongoing IPL 2025. There were multiple talking points in the match, including Rishabh Pant’s scintillating ton, Jitesh Sharma’s match-winning knock but the biggest one was Digvesh Rathi’s appeal for a run-out in the non-striker’s end, which was not only given not-out but interestingly, Pant also cancelled the appeal.
The incident happened in the 17th over of the match. Jitesh, who was in terrific form, was close to taking the game home and that’s when Jitesh noticed that the batter was far ahead of his crease and eventually dislodged the stumps. When umpire Michael Gough asked Digvesh if he would appeal, the bowler confirmed with a ‘yes’. The matter eventually moved to the third umpire, who interestingly, ruled it out.
Later, former umpire Anil Chaudhary noted that it was out and the third umpire might have made an error in judgement. In the meantime, former India international Ravichandran Ashwin lambasted Pant for withdrawing the appeal in the end. He believes that the keeper-batter insulted the bowler by withdrawing and since Digvesh isn’t very well known at the moment, it was easy for Pant to pull off the act.
“This could be Digvesh Rathi’s final game. It must have left a scar on a bowler that it will really affect him. Nobody really cares about a bowler, so it’s easy to insult a bowler in front of a million people. Let’s talk about cricket for a second. According to the law of the game, it went upstairs, the umpire said not-out and it is not-out. There’s absolutely no scene of withdrawing,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
Jitesh went on to play a charismatic knock of unbeaten 85 runs off 33 balls, which helped RCB chase 228 runs with eight balls remaining. It was their highest chase in IPL history.
