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Under-fire Australia’s left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc had an early chance to dismiss Kusal Perera but he chose not to. Perera was backing up too far and Starc decided against running out the Sri Lankan opener. Instead, he just gave him a stare followed by a warning for not staying inside the crease till the ball was released from his hand. South Africa spinner Tabraiz Shamsi was unhappy with Starc letting the batters’s mistakes slide.
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“He should do the right thing and run him out. The bowler is expected to bowl from behind the line, the batters know they're supposed to stay behind the line too,” Shamsi wrote in a comment below the video of the incident posted by the International Cricket Council (ICC) on their Instagram.
It happened again in the fifth over of the innings and Starc pulled out of his action to talk to Perera. The Sri Lankan opener took advantage and went on to score 78 runs from 82 balls including 12 fours. He shared a 125-run opening stand with Pathum Nissanka who scored 61 runs from 67 balls.
Last year, the MCC changed the wording that covers a player being run out at the non-striker's end while backing up from Law 41 (Unfair play) to Law 38 (Run out). The dismissal which is often referred to as Mankading has drawn criticism with former and current cricketers saying that it is against the spirit of the game despite it being legal to run out a player in that fashion.
Starc was under fire for using India women’s cricket team player Deepti Sharma’s example while warning Jos Buttler as he said, "I'm not Deepti, but I won't do it. That doesn't mean you can leave early."
Starc in an interview with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald had also offered a solution to batters leaving the crease early as he said, "Every time the batter leaves the crease before the front foot lands, dock them a run. There’s no grey area then. And in T20 cricket where runs are so handy at the back end and games can be decided by, one, two, three runs all the time, if all of a sudden you get docked 20 runs because a batter’s leaving early, you’re going to stop doing it aren’t you?"
"Then there’s no stigma. It’s taken away from the decision to have to run someone out or think about it. If it’s blatant, it is a different story, but I feel like that is at least completely black and white", he further added.
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