Top 3 Controversial Moments in Cricket in 2023

As the cricketing calendar year of 2023 finally ends, the fans are excited to enter a new year 2024 to witness many interesting cricketing events. 2024 will include some exciting and interesting cricket tournaments, including the Indian Premier League 2024 followed by the T20 World Cup 2024.

Meanwhile, the 2023 also witnessed a lot of amazing cricketing stuff throughout the entire year, which started with the WPL 2023, and IPL 2023 followed by the Test Championship 2023 final and a blockbuster ODI World Cup 2023 later at the end of the year in October and November. Apart from that, there had also been a lot of controversial moments that shook the cricketing world and left the cricket fans or experts in a big debate.

With said that, here we’ll have a look at the 3 most controversial moments of the cricketing calendar year of 2023.

1. Angelo Mathews ‘timed out’ controversy in ODI World Cup 2023

It was something that happened for the very first time in the 146-year-long history of international cricket; none of the batters got timed out in the history of the game. But the cricketing world witnessed something very different first of its kind incident during the ODI World Cup 2023.

It all happened during the group stage match of the ODI World Cup 2023 between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh when former skipper Angelo Mathews was declared ‘timed out’ on an appeal by opponent skipper Shakib Al Hasan. This incident attracted a huge controversial debate in the cricketing world and Shakib Al Hasan faced all-round criticism as most of the analysts and experts called it a ‘pathetic’ move.

2. Mohammed Shami ‘Sajda’ controversy following five-wicket haul celebration

India and Sri Lanka locked horns in the 33^rd league match of the ODI World Cup 2023 at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. India completely outmuscled the Islanders in this match as they bundled out them just at the score of 55 runs while defending the massive target of 358 runs.

But more than India’s 302-run victory, what attracted the eyeballs and resulted in controversy was the celebration style of Mohammed Shami after he completed his five-wicket haul. Most of the people trolled Shami on social media as they interpreted that he stopped himself from completing the religious act ‘Sajda’ due to a fear of getting trolled by people of some other religion.

But Shami himself denied all this stuff by saying that it was his natural way of celebrating the hard work and energy that he went on to put into the work.

3. MI facing backlash after replacing Rohit Sharma with Hardik Pandya as captain

The Indian cricket fans, especially the fans of the five-time IPL champion franchise, Mumbai Indians, couldn’t digest the shocking news when the team’s captain was changed by the management. In a shocking line of events, Mumbai Indians replaced the five-time IPL champion skipper Rohit Sharma with the star all-rounder Hardik Pandya as captain of the team.

This decision from the MI management didn’t go down well with a lot of MI fans and the franchise faced a huge backlash over social media. They lost their followers in the number of millions following this move; apart from this, the outraged fans also burnt the IPL jerseys of the team. It also garnered a lot of critical remarks from the former cricketers and a lot of cricket experts.