Saturday, April 2, 2011

The toss that took place twice



Everyone had their eyes glued on it - the all important toss at the World Cup final. Both Dhoni and Sangakkara had made it pretty clear the day before, that they would like to win the toss and bat first. Not only because the pitch might slow down later in the game but because of the big 'pressure' factor while chasing to win a World Cup.

The Indian and Sri Lankan captains walked out for toss along with Ravi Shastri and match referee Jeff Crowe. As visiting captain, Kumar Sangakkara was supposed to call either 'heads' or ‘tails’ before the coin was tossed by MS Dhoni. Sangakkara did say something, Dhoni then spun the coin and after it landed on the ground Jeff Crowe took a look at it and called out 'heads'. Dhoni and Sangakkara both shook hands thinking they won the toss and that’s when Dhoni sought to clarify. He was under the impression that Sangakkara had called 'tails'.

They asked Crowe what happened, who then claimed that he hadn't heard what Sangakkara had called because of the noise from the crowd and after a couple of minutes of confusion decided to have the toss again.

Sangakkara won the toss fairly and squarely during the re-toss but Indian fans quickly took to expressing their displeasure on the internet with accusations of cheating.

The speculation in the media box at the Wankhede was also rife that the Sri Lankan captain might have done a u-turn on hearing that he had lost.

It didn’t help matters when Michael Vaughan @VaughanCricket tweeted:  Sangakarra has stuffed Dhoni. He shouted Tail in the 1st toss and lost it. You can hear it in on air.

The folks at ESPN-Star then cleared up ambience sound and boosted the audio; the result apparently showed that Sangakkara did say ‘heads’ though his voice was muted.

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