MUMBAI - In game of cricket, ball touching the stumps, but not dislodging the bails may be rare but not uncommon. One such instance occurred at Providence Stadium, Guyana on Saturday when Pakistan's Asad Shafiq was 'bowled' by West Indian bowler Darren Sammy but bails were not dislodged and remained unharmed.
Shafiq could not take the advantage of his luck (he scored only 2 runs in the first innings of the lost Test match) but the batsman who scored 94 runs after being so lucky in this fashion when he had not even opened his account, was former Bangladesh skipper Mohammad Ashraful.
"Yes, I considered myself to be lucky when England's CT Tremlett in his debut match, after grabbing the wickets of Shahriar Nafees and Tushar Imran in two successive balls, could not complete the hat-trick when my bails were not dislodged on the next delivery", Ashraful said from Bangladesh. This was in the ODI played between the two nations at Trentbridge, Nottingham in 2005.
"When I returned home from England after the tour, my brother had jokingly said, "you could not score a ton because the bowler was not allowed to grab the hat-trick", Ashraful concluded.
