Angkrish Raghuvanshi Given Out Obstructing the Field — IPL 2026

Obstructing the Field is among the rarest dismissals in cricket. It has been invoked only a handful of times at the international level and has appeared in the IPL on fewer than a dozen occasions across the tournament's history. The Law (MCC Law 37 in the 2017 code) was rewritten to absorb the older "Handled the Ball" provision and now requires umpires to judge whether a batter has "wilfully" obstructed or distracted the fielding side by word or action.

The word "wilfully" is the entire game. Cricket has always been uncomfortable with mens-rea findings against batters in split-second running situations: a batter glancing at the ball over the shoulder is doing what cricketers are trained to do; a batter changing line by a foot may be reacting instinctively. The Laws ask the umpire to draw a line between instinct and intent — a judgement that is necessarily contestable.

The IPL has an additional procedural feature: the third umpire can rule on Obstructing decisions but cannot consult the on-field umpire's view of intent in real time. Pandit, working from broadcast angles alone, was making an inference about Raghuvanshi's state of mind from his head movement and the timing of his line change. Critics later argued this is exactly the kind of question a third umpire is poorly placed to answer.

KKR were rebuilding through the middle overs after losing two early wickets. Raghuvanshi, in a vein of form he had been building since the start of April, had pushed the asking rate down to manageable territory. The over in question was bowled by a part-time spinner; the field was set with a mid-off and a deep cover, leaving a ones-and-twos gap on the off side that Raghuvanshi targeted.

He took the single he was looking for. The fielder swooped, collected, and threw flat. Raghuvanshi's diving stretch towards the crease was the kind of finish-line scramble that produces obstructing-the-field appeals about once a season. This time the appeal stuck.

The dismissal arrived in the middle overs of KKR's innings. Raghuvanshi had pushed the ball into the off side and turned for a comfortable single. The fielder collected the ball cleanly and threw at the striker's-end stumps. As the throw approached, Raghuvanshi was running back to his ground; replays showed his line shift fractionally — enough that his body appeared to interpose between the throw and the stumps. The fielding captain appealed for obstructing the field. The on-field umpires referred upstairs.

Third umpire Rohan Pandit took several minutes to work through the angles. The Laws on Obstructing the Field require the umpire to judge intent: did the batter "wilfully" obstruct or distract the fielding side? Pandit, satisfied that Raghuvanshi had taken a deliberate look at the ball over his shoulder before adjusting his line, ruled it out. The big screen flashed "OUT" and Raghuvanshi walked off in disbelief.

The cricket world divided immediately. The traditional defence of the dismissal — that batters running between the wickets carry an obligation to take the most direct line — sat alongside the more modern, batter-friendly principle that benefit of doubt in a split-second action should sit with the player on strike. Pandit's verdict landed firmly in the former camp, and the IPL's biggest umpiring controversy of the season was born.

“In a split-second running situation, the benefit should lean to the batter — and here it did not.”

“Where was the intent? You're asking a 21-year-old to compute geometry while sprinting for his ground.”

“It has left the dressing room confused. We will accept the decision and move on.”

The dismissal dominated cricket discussion for 48 hours. Pundits including Aakash Chopra and Harsha Bhogle both publicly questioned the intent finding, with Chopra observing on his YouTube channel that "in a split-second running situation, the benefit should lean to the batter — and here it did not." KKR head coach Chandrakant Pandit, asked at the post-match press conference, declined to attack the third umpire by name but said the call had "left the dressing room confused."

The BCCI did not formally review the decision. Under IPL rules, third-umpire judgements on dismissal cannot be appealed by a franchise after the match — the only avenue is a Code of Conduct complaint about umpire conduct, which KKR did not pursue. The dismissal stands in the records as IPL 2026's first Obstructing the Field on a third-umpire ruling.

The incident reignited a broader procedural debate. Should intent-based dismissals — Obstructing, Handled (when it existed), and Timed Out — be ruled on by on-field umpires only, with the third umpire restricted to a fact-checking role? Several former international umpires made exactly this argument in the days that followed. The MCC Laws sub-committee was reported to have flagged the case for inclusion in its next agenda.