Sri Lanka Cricket to lodge a complaint to ICC over toss blunder in the T20I

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has decided to lodge a complaint with the International Cricket Council (ICC) over the toss blunder made by the Match Referee in the one-off T20I against India. The visiting team won the match quite comfortably on Wednesday to cap off the successful tour on a high. However, it has emerged that Sri Lanka had originally won the toss and Andy Pycroft who was the Match Referee called it wrong.

CricTracker had reported the error on the match day with a video footage. Given a choice to decide, Team India opted to field first, they restricted the Lankans to a manageable total of 170. Virat Kohli’s master class was on display in the chase yet again and ensured Sri Lanka remain winless against India across formats on the tour. The home side failed to win a single game as they lost the Test series and ODI series 3-0 and 5-0 respectively.

The video of the huge mistake is doing rounds on social media and it was sent to the board president on Thursday. “Top officials of the SLC sent all the related material of toss blunder to President Mr Sumathipala on Thursday morning. he is travelling at the moment so need to wait till he lands to see what next step is.” a source close to SLC told Cricket Age.

What actually happened at the toss?

Former Indian cricketer Murali Karthik was there to conduct the toss with Upul Tharanga and Virat Kohli, the two captains by his side along with Pycroft. The host skipper flipped the coin in the air, Virat sticking to his preferred side, called heads. The match referee said ‘tails’ and India won the toss.

Andy Pycroft made an attempt to correct his mistake but by then it was too late and Karthik had started the interview with India skipper assuming India won the toss. Expectedly, Kohli decided to bowl first given the chances of a shortened game due to rain.

However, Upul Tharanga also expressed that he would have bowled first. If the Match Referee had not made the mistake, it would have been India’s turn to bat first. And given the unpredictable nature of T20 cricket who knows, the result might have been different.