Lost ball halts play as umpire pockets it & forgets

Bengaluru: Umpiring howlers refuse to end in the 12th edition of the Indian Premier League, and on Wednesday night umpire Shamshuddin was in the spotlight. He forgot where he kept the ball at the end of the 13th over of the RCB innings as players headed for a strategic break during the Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab face off.

Resuming the game after the second strategic break, KXIP skipper R. Ashwin and Ankit Rajpoot could not find the ball even as AB de Villiers and Marcus Stoinis waited for the game to get underway. Ashwin walked up to Shamshuddin, but even he couldn't track the ball.

Play was halted as Bruce Oxenford joined the scene and the fourth umpire rushed onto the field with a new box of balls. But television replays showed that Shamshuddin had put the ball in his pocket before the players headed for the strategic break at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.

The confusion left AB de Villiers in splits and what followed was an onslaught from the former Proteas skipper as RCB beat KXIP by 17 runs.

Speaking after the game, ABD said that he was only looking to stay calm and not get rattled by the situation. While his innings and the partnership with Stoinis was the game changer, de Villiers also praised the RCB bowlers for putting up a good show as it was relatively easy to bat in the second innings. "I tried to stay calm in the last few overs. It is not easy always, the game is happening at a rapid pace. We know our home ground very well, it hasn't been a great hunting ground for us to start with but we are turning things around now. And we are doing things well. We are doing good as a team. I still think 160 was a par score but it gets easier in the second innings. Our bowlers executed their plans to perfection in the end," he smiled.

Meanwhile, Ashwin said there were quite a few moments in the match which if they had grabbed, the result could have been different from how it panned out — a 17-run loss for KXIP. "There can be so many places where I thought we lost the game, but honestly in a T20 game it's all about winning those pressure moments which we have not been able to win in the last few games. If we had actually held onto those crunch moments, we might have had a couple of more points or probably four points but that's that, we weren't able to close it out and we got some experience in the middle order, but couldn't really close it out in the crucial moments today," he explained.

Ashwin pointed at how RCB have managed to now win 4 out of 5 games and said that one win can now suddenly change the course even for KXIP and they too can get on a roll here.

"It's all about getting one win together and we can get on a roll like RCB won three in a row now, so it's all about getting one win and then we go back home and then we probably try to win a couple on the trot," he said.