During a recent Sky Sports Podcast with James Anderson, South African Pacer Dale Steyn came up with an alleged story of him trapping Sachin Tendulkar in his innings of 200 at Gwalior.
In an One Day International match between India and South Africa in Gwalior, Sachin Tendulkar scored 200 and became the first batsman to score a double century in the format. In the podcast, Steyn alleged that he trapped Tendulkar in front of the stumps while he was in his 190s but the decision was not given in favor of Steyn by the umpire Ian Gould.
He also revealed that he later asked Gould on why he turned down the decision of leg before while it was “dead plumb”. Reportedly, Gould replied saying that he wouldn’t be able to return to his hotel had he given Tendulkar out in the 190s. Since he made this statement, the fans of Indian cricket have begun revisiting the match to verify whether the accusation was true.
The Fact Check
In the One day International match, Dale Steyn only got to bowl three balls to Sachin Tendulkar while he was batting in his 190s. Two of the three balls were tucked away by Tendulkar for singles while the third ball got a leading edge rolling back to Steyn. The claims made by Steyn here seems untrue.
In fact, in the entire course of the match, Steyn bowled a total of 31 balls to Tendulkar out of which 16 were dots. Out of all the balls, in only one instance did Steyn managed to hit the pads of Tendulkar in the seventh over of the match while he was batting at 25. The Hawkeye technology confirms that the ball missed stumps quite comfortably.
About the claim of Ian Gould turning down the appeal, there have only been six international matches where Gould was the umpire that involved Tendulkar and Steyn. Among them were four tests and two ODIs including the match at Gwalior.
However, the only time an LBW appeal was turned down in favor of Tendulkar by Gould was in the 2010 Nagpur test against South Africa. Dale Steyn was the bowler. Sachin Tendulkar was on 92 when a missed leg-glance resulted in an appeal for leg before wicket. However, the hawkeye later did confirm that the ball was going down the leg.
Based on this, we can assert that the claims made by Steyn on the podcast are untrue and baseless.
Source: Crictracker
