A day after Rajasthan Royals batsman Jos Buttler said that the rules of ‘Mankading’ needed clarity, Kings XI Punjab skipper R. Ashwin reiterated his decision to ‘Mankad’ Buttler, adding that his ‘conscience was clear’.
“There is nothing to defend,” Ashwin said on Thursday. “As I said in the press conference that day, it happened instinctively, it was not a plan that ‘Buttler will go outside (the crease) and I have to get him’. Although he did do it four or five times. They didn’t want to take risks against my bowling that day, so what they were doing was pushing the ball on the leg side and trying to take twos.
“I saw that he’d done it (backing up too far) four or five times, and it’s there in the rules that if the batsman goes out of his crease, you can run him out. It’s the batsman’s responsibility to stay behind the crease.”