By IANS,
Mumbai : The toss before the World Cup final had to be gone through all over again as there was confusion as to what the call was at the noisy Wankhede Stadium. Match referee Jeff Crowe obviously did not hear Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara’s as his Indian counterpart Mahendra Singh Dhoni tossed the coin up.
But Dhoni’s body language suggested he had won it and for a second Crowe seemed to suggest the same before he decided to ask the two captains to go through the exercise again.
Crowe asked Dhoni to flick the coin again and this time Sangakkara’s call was a clear “heads” and it was heads and he chose to bat.
Normally, even the television presenter at the toss announces what the call is before the coin comes down, but today Ravi Shastri was mum and checked with Crowe as to who had won the toss.
After the aborted attempt, both Sangakkara and Dhoni stared at each other looking lost as to what they had called for, amid the huge roar in the stadium, as the coin fell on the ground in front of Crowe and Shastri.
Crowe, a former New Zealand captain, was also the match referee at the 2007 World Cup final between Sri Lanka and Australia in Barbados when the match had a farcical ending.
Australia were forced to bowl the final three overs in near darkness at the Kensington Oval. The teams had left the field due to bad light and the umpires wrongly ruled that if the teams did not return, they would have to complete the match next morning.
The match was already reduced to 38 overs because of rain before Australia won the final by 53 runs on the Duckworth Lewis method.
Incidentally, Pakistan’s Aleem Dar, one of the on-field umprires in the Mumbai final, officiated in that match along with West Indian Billy Doctrove.
Crowe had taken the blame upon himself for the bizarre end to that final.