Commonwealth Games 2022: Twitter claims Sreeshankar robbed of gold medal

Murali Sreeshankar started to celebrate after his fourth jump of the night before an elaborate discussion with the video assistant left him with his head in hands in disbelief. It had seemed the Indian had found the one jump he had been looking for all night and breached the 8m mark, before his jump was called a foul by 1 centimetre.

"It was a millimetre!" Sreeshankar screamed to his corner - which also had High Jump medallist Tejaswin Shankar.

In his next attempt, he made up for it by jumping 8.08m, tying him for top spot alongside Laqan Nairn of Bahamas. However, he lost the gold medal on countback as the Bahamas athlete had a better second best jump. While Sreeshankar's second best jump was 7.84m, Nairn's second best jump was 7.94m.

Sreeshankar won the Long Jump silver, losing out on the ultimate prize by the barest of margins, but his earlier foul jump started a debate on social media. Had that jump stood, it was highly probable Sreeshankar would have registered two 8m+ jumps and become the first ever Long Jumper from India to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.

A long jump foul detector system accurately detects a foul when a portion of an athlete's shoe crosses over a foul line when beginning the jump. A laser beam is emitted parallel to and directly above the foul line. This laser beam detector detects interruption of the laser beam by the athlete's shoe, so it is likely some part of Sreeshankar's shoes touched the white part of the line even though it is not visible to the naked eye.

Despite the moment of controversy, Sreeshankar became the first Indian male long jumper to win a silver at the CWG. Suresh Babu had won a bronze in the 1978 edition. Among women, Prajusha Maliakkal won a silver in the 2010 edition in Delhi, while legendary Anju Bobby George bagged a bronze in 2002.

Sreeshankar had gone into CWG as gold medal favourite on the basis of his season's and personal best of 8.36m, which had put him in joint second ranking in the world this season.

The other Indian in the fray, Muhammed Anees Yahiya ended at fifth with a best jump of 7.97m.