Madhav Gothoskar

Veteran Test umpire Madhav Gothoskar's thoughts on turning 81 on Friday were less about himself and more about David Shepherd who passed away two days ago.

In an unprecedented incident, umpire Chettithody Shamshuddin, who was in the spotlight for a controversial decision involving England batsman Joe Root in the second T20I game decided to 'recuse' himself from on-field umpiring duties in Wednesday's T20I decider.

While standing in his debut Test as umpire in Kanpur in 1973, Madhav Gothoskar was challenged by the then English skipper Tony Lewis over a substitution rule. Without pausing for a second, he recited the rules to Lewis. The Englishman was convinced he didn't have any scope to argue.

An old controversy resurfaced as parallels are drawn to the Stokes-Jadeja incident. In the 1983 Bangalore Test, Pakistan's captain Zaheer Abbas controversially left the field, halting play for nearly half an hour and leaving Sunil Gavaskar stranded. Gavaskar, battling illness, eventually completed his century amidst the drama, with teammates and officials questioning Zaheer's sportsmanship.

A glorious summer of cricket in the UK, which first saw the 2019 World Cup, and now the Ashes, has so far seen one major blip, which is threatening to mar all the fun.