On September 28, a frantic moment occurred during the first innings of the IPL match between Delhi Capitals and Kolkata Knight Riders when DC captain Rishabh Pant nearly knocked down KKR wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik while attempting to deflect the ball away from the stumps.
Pant swiped hard at a Varun Chakravarthy delivery on the first delivery of the 17th over, but failed to middle it and instead nearly bottom-edged it towards his stumps.
Pant instinctively swung his bat hard to prevent the ball from smacking his stumps, almost crashing his bat against Karthik’s helmet, who tumbled away just in time to avoid what could have been a severely painful blow to the head.
Caption This! pic.twitter.com/bxCGWaNMal
— DK (@DineshKarthik) September 29, 2021
Karthik didn’t seem amused at first, but Pant quickly apologized for the unintended gaffe, fist-bumping and patting Karthik before continuing the ceremony. Karthik shared a paused frame of the occurrence on Twitter on Wednesday, where Pant appears to be putting his bat on Karthik’s neck as if it were a knife. The senior wicketkeeper wrote, “Caption This!”
While the Pant-Karthik episode ended happily, a couple of other events from the encounter did not. During the match, tempers rose as KKR pacer Tim Southee went for Ravichandran Ashwin after dismissing him in the final over of DC’s innings.
Before Eoin Morgan joined the conversation, the two got into a fierce argument. Karthik, on the other hand, intervened and stopped an animated Ashwin from approaching Morgan.
Karthik talks about the match
Karthik later explained in a post-game virtual conference that the altercation occurred on the last ball of the last over, when the Capitals scored an extra run on an overthrow deflected off Pant at the non- striker’s end.
“Rahul Tripathi threw the ball, it hit Rishabh Pant, and then ricocheted,” Karthik said, as reported by ESPN cricinfo. “And Ashwin called for it and they started to run. I don’t think Morgan appreciates that. I think he’s somebody who, when the ball hits the batsman or the bat, he expects them not to run in the spirit of cricket.”
“Again, it’s a very grey area, it’s a very interesting topic. I have my own opinion on it but at the moment I’ll just say I’m happy I played peacemaker and things have come to a good standstill right now,” he further added.
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