Sometimes it really is Cricket...

Extraordinary scenes at Trente Bridge today.  The final ball before the tea interval was played away to the boundary by Eoin Morgan which was stopped just before the rope by Kumar.  A bit of confusion entailed as Ian Bell thought that it had gone for four and started walking towards the dressing room, at the same time the ball reached the Indian captain/wicket keeper MS Dhoni, who through to a team mate who was stood over the stumps.  They were subsequently removed and Ian Bell was clearly run out.  By the letter of the law the dismissal was clear, by the spirit of the game, well it wasn't cricket.  


Then over the interval Andy Flower (England coach) and Andrew Strauss (England captain) approached the Indian dressing room and asked them to reconsider their decision, after a team meeting they agreed.


We then had the weird situation of the crowd not knowing, as such the umpires entered the field followed by the Indians to a chorus of boos until the English batsmen, Ian Bell one of them emerged.


This was an excellent gesture by the Indian team.  They would have been well within their rights to uphold it, Bell was foolish and they had done nothing wrong.  I would like to say that England would have done the same thing, however past record doesn't indicate that should be considered a given.  In 2008 there was an incident when Ryan Sidebottom ran into the batsman and prevented him from making his ground, yet England upheld their appeal despite the Umpire obviously indicating to the captain (Paul Collingwood) that perhaps they shouldn't. 


The gesture is even more remarkable given the state of the game.  Ian Bell was playing really well and could easily have added more than he did.  The cricket has been really competitive, these are probably the best two in the world at the moment, one of them will be number one at the end of the series (currently held by India) so it's not like it was meaningless.  


It's good to see and things like that are only good for the game.  It's a shame that nobody informed the crowd as the entrance onto the pitch could have been better.