Follow UsThursday’s World Cup encounter between Australia and South Africa was not short on drama. It started with the dismissal of Steve Smith when a short ball from Kagiso Rabada wrapped him on the pads, and it seemed like the ball was striding down the leg side.
Even the umpire thought so, as did Marnus Labuschagne, the non-striker, and Smith himself. But Temba Bavuma, whose captaincy in this edition has been impeccable, thought otherwise and went upstairs to find that it was indeed clipping, much to the dismay of Smith.
“Well, I was hoping for ‘umpires call’ I felt as if it just skidded through, didn't really bounce much,” Rabada said in the post-match press conference in Lucknow. “And as you know, Steve, he walks across his stumps. That's just his trigger. And it just, from my angle and from Quinny's [De Kock] angle it looked quite good and we decided to go up and yeah, I mean the technology favoured us today, but I thought it was it was close, I don't think it was as obvious as ‘missing’.”
“Yes, I think he was looking good. He was moving really well, you could see. And he's a key player for Australia. He really binds that team together and that batting lineup together. And he's always a key wicket in any format. But looking at one-day cricket, he has the ability to occupy the crease and also score runs whilst doing so. So, he was definitely a big wicket, and we knew we had to get him early.”
There was a mini-controversy of sorts when Marcus Stoinis was caught behind in the 18th over, but there were doubts about Stoinis’ gloves having any contact with the bat at the time of impact. The third umpire decided to check the front-on angle and thus concluded it as a dismissal, which sent many in the Australian camp into shock mode.
“I initially thought it hit his thigh pad and my teammates around me felt that they heard a woody sound. And you know, Stoinis didn't look so convincing. I think he looked as if, he felt as if he touched it. I guess the controversy was around the fact that his hand was off the bat when the ball made contact with his glove. But we thought it was the bat handle. Again, that's not up to us. We reviewed it and the umpires made a decision,” Rabada added.
The Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi and the Ekanna Stadium in Lucknow were rated substandard during the Indian Premier League, but for the World Cup, it has held together really well. Rabada seemed pretty impressed with the way the wicket has behaved so far.
“Yeah, in Delhi, there was quite a decent amount of grass coverage and that certainly meant that the pitch would hold together for a longer time, which means it would stay true. And that was the case in Delhi, it was flat in Delhi,” Rabada, who has played a quite amount of cricket in India, said.
“And today, judging on how the pitches played here in the IPL, there was one that was really dry and another that looked similar to what this one was like. And the word around is that they have relayed the pitches. I don't know how they've done that; whether they've added more grass, I'm not too sure. But it certainly looks that way.
“Under lights, it just seemed to zip that extra bit more. But the word during the day was that it was it had a bit of pace in it and a bit of bounce in it and I guess with a bit of the moisture at night it just did a bit more,” the South African pacer added.