Now that Digvesh Rathi's celebration has hit a sore note (book) he should focus more on taking wickets rather than accumulating fines.
A notebook is meant for taking notes and not for celebrating a wicket in a cricket match.
This is a lesson Lucknow Super Giants spinner Digvesh Rathi may have learned during the 2025 Indian Premier League.
His unique style of celebration after taking a wicket involves mimicking the action of pulling out a notebook and pretending to write, as if signing off or sending off the dismissed player.
Rathi was fined 25 percent of his match fee for this provocative celebration after dismissing Punjab opener Priyansh Arya on April 1.
He repeated the gesture on April 4 after dismissing Mumbai Indians' Naman Dhir, and this time received a 50 percent fine.
Had he taken note of his first fine -- and mentally noted not to repeat the notebook act -- he could have avoided the second penalty, which came just four days later.
Now that he has lost a total of 75 percent of his match fee, he might want to record the loss in a real notebook!
Perhaps it will also remind him of his school days, when he used notebooks to make notes in class -- not to celebrate wickets.
One thing is clear: The IPL is not going to tolerate him misusing the symbolic notebook.
Sunil Gavaskar revealed that Rathi picked up this celebration style from West Indies bowler Kesrick Williams, who did a notebook celebration after dismissing Virat Kohli in 2017.
Kohli, in turn, responded by hammering Williams all over the park later in the series.
Interestingly, I was at the match when Williams made his international debut in 2016 in a T20I against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi.
He had dismissed both the openers, but did not perform his trademark notebook celebration. The West Indies lost that match by 8 wickets.
In the 2021 CPL T20, Williams revived the act while playing for the Jamaica Tallawahs against the Guyana Amazon Warriors.
In response, Guyana Opener Chadwick Walton -- on his way to an unbeaten 84 and a nine-wicket win -- mocked the act by pretending to write notes on his bat after hitting boundaries.
Rathi won the Player of the Match award for his miserly spell of 1 for 21 in four overs against Mumbai.
If Rathi wants to celebrate by emulating another West Indian, he could take inspiration from pacer Sheldon Cottrell's military-style salute after taking a wicket.
One only hopes he doesn't follow the path of Zimbabwe's Tinashe Panyangara, who once celebrated a wicket in the 2015 ICC World Cup by crawling like a fish after dismissing South Africa's Hashim Amla.
Now that Rathi's celebration has hit a sore note (book) he should focus more on taking wickets rather than accumulating fines.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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