Melbourne [Australia]: Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting has said that he will talk to spinner Ravichandran Ashwin about not resorting to 'Mankad' in the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020.
Ponting, the head coach of IPL franchise Delhi Capitals said that he will talk to the newest addition to his team as Ashwin is all set to represent the franchise this year in the UAE. The spinner's mankading act of Jos Buttler had made all the headlines last year and it sparked a huge debate on social media as to whether the dismissal is in the spirit of the game or not. Ashwin was the skipper of Kings XI Punjab last season, while Buttler was playing for Rajasthan Royals.

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"I will be having a chat with him about Mankad, that's the first thing I'll do. Obviously, he wasn't in our squad last year, he's one of our players that we tried to bring in this year. Look, he's a terrific bowler, and he's done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said -- Look, I know he's done it, there'll be others around the tournament who'll think about doing this well but that's not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won't be doing that," the Grade Cricketer's Podcast quoted Ponting as saying.

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As per the laws of the game, "if the non-striker is out of his/her ground at any time from the moment the ball comes into play until the instant when the bowler would normally have been expected to release the ball, the non-striker is liable to be run out."
However, Ponting believes that there are other ways to stop the batsmen from venturing out of their crease at the non-striker's end rather than opting for 'Mankad'.
"I think there are ways that you can actually stop batsmen cheating like that. If the bowler was to stop, and the batsman was a foot out of his crease for instance, why don't you just penalise him some runs or something? Then they won't do it again," Ponting said.
"I chatted to some of the match referees about it during last year's IPL as well. If the umpires make a stance and do something to warn the batsman that they might be cheating, then that's better than having the ugly incident of a Mankad," he added.
The 13th edition of the IPL will be played from September 19- November 10 and it will be staged at three venues (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah) in the UAE.Moreover, both the afternoon and evening matches will be played half-an-hour earlier than usual.

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"IPL 2020 will be played from September 19 and the final will be played on November 10, 2020. The 53-day tournament will witness 10-afternoon matches starting at 15:30 IST while the evening matches will start at 19:30 IST," the BCCI release had stated. (ANI)

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