ISLAMABAD – Following plenty of controversy and drama, ESPNCricinfo’s pollfor the greatest ever T20 cricketer is back on track with only 4semi-finalists remaining.
The last 4 men standing are Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga, West Indianall-rounder, Andre Russell, India’s Rohit Sharma, and finally, the UniverseBoss, Chris Gayle. Surprisingly, the poll didn’t include one of the finestfast bowlers of the format, Umar Gul.——————————
The winners of each contest are being decided by Cricinfo’s readers,however, debates stirred up when Indian captain, Virat Kohli lost to ChrisGayle in the previous round of voting.
India has a huge cricketing fan base, however, die-hard Kohli fans were notenough to stop Gayle from entering the top 4. So, they started trending#ShameOnESPNcricinfo to protest an alleged bug in the voting. As perTwitter users, Kohli was slightly ahead of Gayle when voting time ended,however, the latter won by 50.02% or 57 votes out of over 130,000 votes intotal.
This made cricket lovers protest against the website as they were forced toreopen the voting process after acknowledging a glitch in the voting engine.
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While the poll was closed at the time specified (6.30 am GMT on May 1) andat that time Kohli was leading, there was a lag in the polling engine andsome of the votes reflected on the system a couple of hours later. We fullyunderstand and regret the confusion it has caused.
The development bought Kohli fans some more time, however, it still wasn’tenough to take him to the top 4 as Gayle edged past him slightly once againat the end of extended voting time.
Pakistanis who have been eliminated – all in the first round – includeShahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik, Sohail Tanvir, Saeed Ajmal, and Babar Azam.
