Ian Bishop says the decision to retire a batter out needs guts, while Dasgupta believes it was the right move and should have been made sooner
Karthik Krishnaswamy18-May-20231:34
Bishop: Decision to retire out needs ‘guts’
With five overs remaining in their chase of 214 against Delhi Capitals on Wednesday, Punjab Kings made a rare tactical call. Atharva Taide, who had scored 55 off 42 balls, went off the field, becoming only the second player in IPL history to retire out.At that point, Kings were 128 for 3, needing 86 to win off 30 balls.Kings had begun their chase with a required rate of 10.7 in 20 overs. Taide had faced the equivalent of seven overs and gone at a rate of just above 6.3. When Taide retired out, their required rate had shot up to 17.2.With six-hitters in Jitesh Sharma, Shahrukh Khan and Sam Curran waiting to bat, it seemed an entirely pragmatic move for Kings to pull off a batter who was clearly struggling – Taide finished with a control percentage of below 70 – but did they wait too long to make it? They certainly let Taide bat on for a considerable length of time: his was the highest score of the 14 T20 innings that have ended in this manner. The previous highest was 50 off 39 balls, by Hevit Jackson for France against Estonia in July 2022.Related
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Reviewing the Kings-Capitals game on , ESPNcricinfo experts Deep Dasgupta and Ian Bishop felt Kings could have retired Taide out earlier in their innings.Bishop, though, hailed Kings for taking the decision in the first place. Only once before in the 16 seasons of the IPL has a batter retired out – R Ashwin during Rajasthan Royals’ match against Lucknow Super Giants last season. Bishop said he had been on the verge of suggesting on social media that Kings follow that example, only for the thought of Rahul Tewatia’s miraculous turnaround from a similar situation, back in 2020, to hold him back.”The over before, I was getting ready to put on social media – retired out, but I was reluctant in case he did a Rahul Tewatia, and that kind of opprobrium being thrown back at me,” Bishop said. “But I want to give them credit for actually making the decision, whoever made it, because it’s not an easy decision to make, even though Ashwin did it and we’re going to see it more and more, it still takes some guts.”So that’s another opening of that pathway now for teams to make that call, but yes, it could have been done a little earlier.”Dasgupta was unequivocal that Taide should have come off earlier.Atharva Taide was only the second batter to retire out in the IPL•Associated Press”Well, to be honest, [the decision] should have come a little earlier, because [Taide] was going at [a strike rate of] about 130 if I’m not wrong, in a 200-plus game, 214 to be precise. You’ve got to go quicker than that. That middle phase is, I think, where it hurt Punjab a lot … Those middle overs, especially those six overs of spin, I think that really, in the end, hurt Punjab quite a bit. A few more runs there, it would have been a very interesting last over – and it was (laughs).”Liam Livingstone’s six-hitting kept Kings in the game, just about, and when the last over began, he was on strike with 33 required – a six every ball. The win seemed to go out of the window when he swung and missed at the first ball from Ishant Sharma, but a no-ball for a high-full toss later in the over put Kings back in contention – at least mathematically – with 16 needed off the last three balls.It wasn’t to be, with Ishant closing the match out with two dots and the wicket of Livingstone, caught on the long-off boundary for 94 off 48 balls.That Kings got as close as they did only reinforced the idea that they may have left it too late to retire Taide out. But on another day, they may not have needed to make the decision at all. In the 10th over, when Taide was on 35 off 28, he stepped out to Kuldeep Yadav and miscued him to long-on, where substitute fielder Yash Dhull put down a sitter.Dhull’s drop was part of a series of fielding lapses from Capitals. Livingstone had been reprieved in Kuldeep’s previous over, when Anrich Nortje dropped him at deep midwicket. And in the over after the Dhull drop, Livingstone and Taide were involved in a mix-up that left the latter stranded halfway down the pitch, only for the extra-cover fielder David Warner to miss the stumps at the non-striker’s end. Then Livingstone, looking to run an overthrow, found himself in no man’s land when Taide sent him back, but an inaccurate throw and a missed collection from keeper Phil Salt gave him another life.Kings would have been relieved that Livingstone survived his near-misses, but they may have had a slightly more mixed reaction to Taide’s lives. The longer Taide’s struggle went on, the more it hurt their chances, and for that reason, it would have been entirely in Capitals’ interests to keep Taide on the pitch.That, then, could be the next tactical taboo for an IPL team to break: the deliberate dropped catch.