How often do you see the captain instructing his men to walk off the pitch in the game of cricket? Not much frequently, I reckon. One such incident by Shakib Al Hasan has become the talk of the town recently and many seem to have forgotten that this is not the first time it has happened.

So, here Cricfrenzy presents you four moments when the skippers of their respective teams had gone berserk and called the team to walk off the field.

 

#1 Sunil Gavaskar (1981)

In the 1981 series between India and Australia which had been dogged by some inconsistent umpiring, a Dennis Lillee in-cutter trapped Gavaskar lbw and umpire Rex Whitehead, standing in just his third Test, raised the finger.

Gavaskar tried to convince the umpire that the ball had touched his bat before it hit the pad. He stayed on the pitch for long enough and even slapped his pad with the bat as an angry gesture.

However, the umpire stuck to his decision and while walking back to the pavilion, Gavaskar heard a comment from Dennis Lillee which prompted him to return to the crease and instruct fellow opener, Chetan Chauhan, to walk off the pitch with him.

Chetan had no option but to follow his leader and before he could cross the boundary rope, team manager Shahid Durrani and Bapu Nadkarni successfully persuaded him to continue the game.

"I regret the decision. It was a big mistake on my part. As Indian captain, I was not supposed to act in that manner. In no way I can justify my act of defiance. Whether I was out or not, I should not have reacted that way," Gavaskar said during a tea-time chat show with Sanjay Manjrekar and Kapil Dev.

"If the incident would have occurred in present times then I would have been fined," he added.

 

#2 Arjuna Ranatunga (1999)

During the Boxing Day Test in Australia, Sri Lanka bowling legend Muttiah Muralitharan was called by umpire Darren Hair for throwing the ball.

In the Melbourne Test in 1995, Hair believed the then 23-year-old was bending his arm and straightening it in the process of delivery; hence, adopting an illegal action while bowling.

In front of a crowd of 55,239 people, Hair called a total of seven no-balls from Muttiah. After the first five calls, Arjuna Ranatunga left the field to take advice from his team management and returned after five minutes. Muralitharan was called two more times before Ranatunga removed him from the attack and made him bowl from umpire Dunne's end.

Later in 1996, Muralitharan's action was cleared by the ICC after biomechanical analysis at the University of Western Australia and at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology.

Three years after that incident, Lankan captain Ranatunga called his team to walk off to the dressing room after Muralitharan was once again no-balled for throwing in an ODI against England, but this time, by umpire Ross Emerson.

The play was held up for 12 minutes until the players of Sri Lanka were done having a discussion with Emerson, his co-umpire, and match referee. However, the game then continued and finished without further incident. Muralitharan bowled three more overs from Emerson's end as well.

 

#3 Inzamam Ul Haq (2006)

It is the incident when Pakistan became the first team in 129 years of Test cricket and 1,814 matches to forfeit a match after being punished for ball tampering. Umpires, Australian Darrell Hair and West Indian Billy Doctrove, had docked five runs from Pakistan’s total as they were accused of damaging the ball and a new ball had been brought in.

Pakistan seemingly accepted the decision on the ground but later protested and did not come out to play after the game got interrupted due to bad light.

Darrell Hair dramatically called the game off by removing the bails and to this day the decision of then Pakistan skipper Inzamam Ul Haq to not allow the players to go on the field comes up while discussing such moments.

Former Pakistan opener Imran Farhat painted a picture of confusion in the Pakistan dressing room on that day.