Indian cricketer Ravindra Jadeja is currently making headlines for all the right reasons as he won the Player of the Match award in the first test match of the 4-match test series against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023. This is certainly a great comeback of Ravindra Jadeja as he was away from cricket for almost six months because of his knee injury.
However, he also became a part of controversy as few Australia media channels accused him of ball tampering after he was seen rubbing something on his index finger. A video clip went viral on the Internet in which Ravindra Jadeja was seen taking something from Mohammed Siraj’s hand and then he rubbed it on his finger.
There were some people who raised questions regarding the incident as they felt that Ravindra Jadeja was tampering the ball while few others thought that the unknown substance must have helped him in spinning the ball. The former English cricketer Michael Vaughan also questioned it, saying that he has never seen anything like this ever before.
What is it he is putting on his spinning finger ? Never ever seen this … #INDvsAUS https://t.co/NBPCjFmq3w
— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) February 9, 2023
The former Indian cricketer and former head coach Ravi Shastri slammed the Australian media and all those people including Michael Vaughan who were accusing Ravindra Jadeja of ball tampering. He states that the Australian team has faced no difficulty because of that incident and match referee has cleared everything which means that the matter has come to an end so there is nothing to discuss. Ravi Shastri adds that if there had been anything doubtful, the match referee would have taken an action.
As per reports, the match referee Andy Pycroft called the Indian skipper Rohit Sharma and team manager and showed them the clip. The BCCI informed the match referee that it was a pain relief cream which Jadeja rubbed on his index finger.
Although the match referee cleared Ravindra Jadeja of any wrong doing, he penalized him by imposing a fine of 25 percent of his match fees for breaching the Level 1 of ICC Code of Conduct because he didn’t inform the umpires before applying the cream.
India has taken a lead of 1-0 and it needs to win the series by 3-1 or 3-0 in order to qualify for the finals of the World Test Championship 2021-23. The second test match will start on 17th Feb 2023 and it will be played at Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi.