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During the third T20I between India and England , a kinda controversial stumping involving vice-captain Tilak Varma caught everyones attention. At first, Jos Buttler’s stumping looked like a clean and straightforward dismissal , but then the replay came in and suddenly it turned into a heated discussion.

This moment happened while India were wrestling through their chase of 202 at Trent Bridge in Nottingham . The visitors were under immense pressure already , after losing five wickets inside the powerplay , so Tilak Varma was basically left with the task of rebuilding the innings and steadying things down.

Still, Will Jacks removed Tilak in a dramatic sort of way. The spinner bowled a quick, flat delivery toward the stumps. Tilak stepped out to play a more attacking stroke but he couldnt quite make contact, and the ball beat the inside edge of his bat, no mercy in that little gap.

England’s wicketkeeper Jos Buttler quickly grabbed the ball and removed the bails, while Tilak stayed put just outside his crease. Right after the stumps were broken the ball seemed to slip out of Buttler’s gloves ,and that little moment caused confusion over whether the dismissal was actually legal.

Later ,slow-motion replays suggested that yes the ball came loose right afterward but Buttler still had a firm touch on it through his gloves and fingertips at the exact second the bails were taken off. So in the end the stumping matched the laws of the game, and the third umpire was right to rule Tilak Varma out.

India’s vice-captain then walked back to the pavilion after making only 3 runs off 11 balls, leaving the visitors six wickets down in a tough chase. Very fast, the whole dismissal turned into a hot discussion point online. A lot of fans wondered whether Buttler truly had full control over the ball when he broke the stumps, so the debate spread pretty quickly across social media.

According to the MCC Laws of Cricket, a wicket is fairly put down when a fielder holding the ball removes at least one bail or strikes the stumps out of the ground while staying in control of the ball. Even if the ball slips out right after, the dismissal still stands as long as the fielder had that control at the exact moment the wicket was put down. But if that control is lost before the stumps are actually broken, then the batter can not be given out.

In Tilak Varma's case, Buttler clearly had control of the ball when he broke the stumps . The ball only slipped after the wicket had already been fairly put down. So, because Tilak 's foot was still outside the crease, the appeal ended up as a legal stumping. The important bit was never whether Buttler later dropped the ball. It was about whether he controlled it when the stumps were broken. The replay backed this up, confirming that he did, and that means the umpire decision was the correct one.

Tilak Varma getting out also sort of ended India’s last hopes of actually chasing the target . They were 60/6 when they were looking at 202, so realistically there wasn’t much room for a comeback, and the batting order looked flat, like no one could properly put up resistance.

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Harshit Rana , Shivam Dube , Arshdeep Singh and captain Shreyas Iyer all walked back with scores sitting at single digits. India slipped from 52/5 to 70/9 in only five overs, and it turned into this dramatic collapse.

Josh Tongue paced England’s bowling with really good numbers, 4/28 in his four overs, while Jofra Archer took three wickets. India finished all out for 76, marking one of their lower T20I totals. England then wrapped it up with a huge 125-run win, and they went 2-0 up in the five-match T20I series.