The tea break during the Nottingham test was about to be called, a strange thing happened on the ground as umpires had to refer the events of the last ball to the third umpire. Playing at 137*, Ian Bell was standing at the non-striker’s end as Eoin Morgan pushed the ball he faced towards the square leg rushing towards the boundary. Pravin Kumar was the fielder that was chasing the ball and managed to bizarrely stop it at the last moment. Bell who ran three runs left his crease for the fourth run while thinking that it was already a boundary and did not touch the bat back in the crease.
Bell assumed it was a boundary and left the pitch in hopes of tea break when the umpires had neither signalled a tea break nor a boundary. As Pravin Kumar threw the ball back to Dhoni, he passed the ball to another fielder who took off the bails. After referring to the third umpire, Bell was declared out and along with him, the entire England dressing room looked disappointed and shocked.
During the tea break, England’s captain Andrew Strauss approached MS Dhoni and asked if he could withdraw his appeal in order to call Ian Bell back on the pitch to bat. MS Dhoni accepted his request and decided to withdraw his appeal for runout and Ian Bell returned to bat again after the tea break. ICC recognised this decision by Dhoni as the most spirited moment of this decade in cricket and awarded MS Dhoni with Spirit of Cricket award.