Feature

Australia catch the dropping infection

Plays of the day from the game between Australia and Pakistan in Mirpur

Saeed Ajmal made a mess of a straightforward chance at deep cover  •  Getty Images

Saeed Ajmal made a mess of a straightforward chance at deep cover  •  Getty Images

The sloppy effort I
Glenn Maxwell offered few opportunities to the Pakistan bowlers in a hurricane innings, but in the 11th over, he played a shot towards deep cover. Saeed Ajmal ran in, crouched and got under the ball. As the ball landed on his palm, he tried to grab at it, forcing it to pop out, hit his wrist and then his mouth, before falling out of reach. A rare reprieve when the fielder's mouth intervened.
The sloppy effort II
In the tenth over, Shane Watson, Kamran Akmal and Doug Bollinger combined to put together a pretty ordinary piece of cricket. Watson bowled a full-toss which was a foot-fault no-ball; Akmal turned it straight into Bollinger's midriff and the fielder dropped the chance. As if that wasn't enough for Watson and Bollinger, Akmal pasted the next ball, also a full-toss, for a huge six over midwicket.
The old men
Twenty20 may not be the young man's game people initially feared it would be, but two of the oldest players in the tournament Brad Hogg and Brad Hodge didn't quite sparkle on the field. In the eighth over, Hogg spilled a catch off Nathan Coulter-Nile's bowling at the deep square-leg boundary. In the 18th over, Hodge mistimed his jump by a split second at point, making it harder for him to cling on to a chance given by Shahid Afridi's splaying blade.
The exercise in caution
At times, the effort to take a catch can be so spectacular that the umpires are inclined to go to their colleague upstairs for a second look. Brad Haddin leapt to his right to grab what looked like Kamran Akmal's edge, but replays suggested it was clearly a bump ball, which was quite visible even with the naked eye. In this era of replays however, what harm would one more appeal do?

Mohammad Isam is ESPNcricinfo's Bangladesh correspondent. He tweets here; Abhishek Purohit is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo