Lost balls, and wounded Polly
S Rajesh presents the Plays of the day from South Africa v West Indies
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New balls, please
Chris Gayle had already smashed five sixes before the tenth over got
underway, but he saved his biggest of the evening for Albie Morkel. Seeing
the manner in which the short balls had been dismissed earlier, Morkel
tried to pitch it up, lost the plot slightly, and sent down a full toss.
Gayle needed no second invitation: the right leg moved outside leg as he
gave himself room, and the result was a savage carve over backward point,
well over the stands outside the ground. Normally, that would have held up
play for at least a minute, but here, umpire Darryl Harper, standing at
square leg, scurried across even as the reserve umpire, Karl Hurter,
rolled another ball onto the ground. The delay hardly lasted five seconds,
and play was ready to resume even before you'd realised the ball had been
changed.
Wounded Polly
Everyone in South Africa loves Shaun Pollock - there were huge cheers
every time he hit the stump while bowling in practice just before play
began - but not much went right for him when it was his turn to bowl in
the middle. Gayle took him apart completely, but his one little moment to
savour in that hopelessly one-sided battle came in over number 12: a
painfully slow bouncer pitched in the middle of the track, climbed and
then looped down even as it was reaching the batsman, Gayle, and so
flummoxed him that he could only watch transfixed as it lobbed past him to
the wicketkeeper. Pollock and the crowd loved that bit of deception.
Unfortunately for them, the rest of the went decisively against good ol'
Polly, who was left nursing rather embarrassing bowling figures by the end
of the day.
Butterfingers
A target of 206 should have been difficult, but West Indies decided to
play gracious guests. Dwayne Bravo started the rot, allowing the ball to
pop out from his hands to give Gibbs a reprieve at 20; the virus then
spread to Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who spilled an admittedly difficult
chance from Gibbs; Marlon Samuels then capped a miserable day for West
Indies in the field by dropping a sitter off Justin Kemp. Add all the
wides sent down, and it's easy to see why they lost.
Eyeball to eyeball
It might be all fun and music for the crowd, but a couple of incidents in
the match showed that Twenty20 is serious business. Daren Powell started
off with a vicious short ball which caused Graeme Smith immense
discomfort, and then began a glaring contest with Gibbs, who is never
one to back away. Fidel Edwards then continued the eyeball confrontation,
sometimes bowling with such searing pace that the ball was still climbing
when it reached the wicketkeeper.
Ramdin to the rescue
The game was all about bat hitting ball and ball disappearing beyond the
boundary, but there was one other performance that stood out too. West
Indies' bowlers, perhaps not satisfied with a format that only allows
each of them 24 deliveries, bowled wide after wide, and Denesh Ramdin darted
around like a dervish, gathering most of them cleanly. In the fifth over,
when Daren Powell lost control altogether, Ramdin saved four byes by
moving down leg side and then diving full length to make a clean gather. A
few overs later, standing up to Dwayne Smith, he was at it again, making a clean
take way down leg despite being blinded by the batsman. The catch he took
to dismiss AB de Villiers capped a fine night's work for him. If only the
same could have been said of the rest of the West Indian performance in
the field.
S Rajesh is stats editor of Cricinfo
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