Indian Premier League 2 : IPL 2 : IPL 2009

MUMBAI: It’s rare that Sachin Tendulkar loses his cool. But on Wednesday after the loss against Team Mohali, the batting maestro was livid. It’s just that only those in the dressing room felt the heat of his anger. Tendulkar wasn’t just dismayed by his teammates who messed up a super chance to inch closer to the IPL semifinal spot but was also cheesed off by the decisions of the third umpire Suresh Shastri, who according to the Mumbai Indians “goofed-up big time”.

“There seems to be something fishy, how can he be targeting us all the time. Most of his run-out calls were
ridiculous”, said a member of the team management.

On his part, Tendulkar himself chose to be diplomatic. “ICC regulations do not allow us to comment but yes, everyone has seen how the decisions (third umpire’s) went. Obviously, it does hurt when such things happen but the whole world has seen the decisions and the whole world has watched which way they went. I’m not trying to indicate anything to anyone but had the run-outs not happened we would’ve got those extra runs and won,” said Tendulkar after the game.

When asked if he will take up the matter with the authorities, he said, “We’ll leave it to the team management if they want to do anything about it.”

According to team sources, Mumbai Indians felt that they had been done-in in three of the four run-outs including the one where Luke Pomersbach was given the benefit of doubt when a throw from the deep directly hit the stumps.

The second big error, according to the team, was when Piyush Chawla apparently missed to rip the bails off in first attempt when trying to run out Dwayne Smith. “We were shocked to see the screen flashing ‘Run Out’. In fact, we initially thought it was a mistake,” said the source.

In fact, there was more anger directed against Shastri. “It was the same umpire who refused to call a bouncer even when a bowler bowled four consecutive one against us in our game against Delhi Daredevils,” recalled a team management member.