Gulbadin Naib tries to kill time dramatically with Afghanistan ahead of DLS score

A player goes down, faking injury and wasting time. The opposition laughs, and the match officials are seen circling around the player. 

You have seen it happen a lot, haven’t you? 

But the sport where we often see such an incident is football, where ‘time-wasting’ is an evident tactic employed. More often than not, the player is also penalised for employing such tactics, with the referee branding a yellow or red card. On June 24 (Monday), such an incident occurred in Afghanistan's clash against Bangladesh when Afghanistan all-rounder Gulbadin Naib went down on the ground. 

It was the 12th over of the innings, and Afghanistan were just about ahead of Bangladesh by two runs in the DLS method. Afghanistan’s head coach, Jonathan Trott, was guarding the edge of the dugout, pacing to and fro to the boundary line, calming his team out in the middle. 

Trott’s message seemed quite clear: ‘Slow things down’. But how? 

That’s when Naib decided to take matters into his own hands. With the weather gloomy and rain beginning to increase in intensity, the all-rounder went down on the ground, clutching his hamstring. Naib was fielding at the slip cordon before throwing himself to the ground rapidly. 

In the few minutes that Naib was on the ground, the rain became quite heavy, to the point that the umpires asked the two teams to get off the field. As the two teams walked off the field, the visuals showed Litton Das mocking Naib’s fall in a ‘fun banter’ with Afghanistan’s reserve player, who was on the field running the drinks.

While Afghanistan skipper Rashid Khan was far from impressed, it certainly helped them as they raced off the field due to rain. Had rain stopped the clash, Afghanistan would have been crowned the winners by a slender margin of two runs. 

It would have also sealed their first-ever semi-final qualification across World Cups in any format. Funnily enough, later on, Naib returned to bowl his first over of the clash, where he removed Tanzim Hasan Sakib with a ball that jumped up like a spring.

If you’ve not downloaded the Cricket.com app yet, you’re missing out — big time. Play Fantasy on Cricket.com NOW! Download the App here.