The pitch at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy, which was used for the first semi-final of the T20 World Cup on Wednesday and saw Afghanistan crash to their lowest ever T20I total, has come under sharp focus. In a tournament where pitches in the US leg of the matches came under intense scrutiny for being underprepared, even in the Caribbean leg some of the tracks have been hard to score off. However, in the new pitch used for the semifinal, apart from seam movement, the unpredictability of the bounce made it all the more challenging for the batsmen from both sides.
During the pitch report it was evident that the grass cover would aide movement. And pointing to the cracks on offer, former Australia captain Ricky Ponting suggested that bounce or lack of it could well be a factor. And it turned out to be true as South Africa’s seamers capitalised on the conditions and take them through to their maiden World Cup final appearance.
“It seems strange to me that you’ll use a brand new wicket for a semifinal one that you’ve actually got no idea about how it’s going to play. We heard the preparation for this wicket started about a week and a half,” Ponting told the host broadcaster.
And more than the movement on offer, Ponting was particularly unhappy with uneven bounce. “There was a game early in the tournament – West Indies and New Zealand – which was a 150 plays 140 type game. And at least they had some sort of idea of how that wicket was going play. I know the ball swung that night. That’s okay. You can deal with that. But the variation in bounce and seam that we’ve seen here, I’m not sure if I’m the groundsman, I’ll be experimenting with something like that in such a big moment,” Ponting said.
As Marco Jansen and Kagiso Rabada went about hitting the good length areas, apart from the movement on offer, thanks to the former’s height, there was some exaggerated bounce. But when Anrich Nortje – who hits the deck hard – came on to bowl, he saw one of his deliveries that kept climbing even after going past the batsman. As Karim Janat tried to slash, it missed the top edge and the ball kept climbing, giving no chance for the wicketkeeper as it went for 4 byes. Then in his next over, Rashid Khan could do nothing about Nortje’s delivery, which didn’t climb from back of a good length and instead kept low to crash the stumps.
Thereafter the uneven bounce became the norm during South Africa’s innings. Off the second ball of the chase, Naveen-ul-Haq’s length delivery climbed significantly to hit Quinton de Kock on the midriff. And two deliveries later, another length delivery would hit the deck and get find excessive bounce again. In the next over bowed by Fazalhaq Farooqi, who mostly bowled fuller, there was no space for extra bounce.
But the hit-the-deck bowlers seemed to make the most out of it. In his second over, Naveen once again got steep bounce. But in his third, he made deliveries that jumped off from good length as well as kept low from the same areas. Then Rashid Khan got one of his leg-breaks to shoot low.
However, the seventh over bowled by Azmatullah Omarzai that caused lot of problems. Three of his deliveries – all from good length – shot low. One of it climbed just ankle-high and another went below the bat to the keeper. But the last ball of the over would see the ball climb awkwardly from the same good length area with the batsman Reeza Henrdicks doing well to keep the ball down by playing it with a loose grip.
Had Afghanistan managed a three-figure total, the story could have been a lot different. But with just 56 on board, South Africa managed to knock it off.
“I think it was a tough night for us as a team and we could’ve done better than us. But conditions didn’t let us do that but you should be mentally ready for any situation. I thought we didn’t bat well. We were struggling when Mujeeb got injured, but Nabi, Fazal…that made our job as a spinning unit easier. The consistency in bowling was something pleasing for me. We came here before the tournament and if you told us we would be playing the semi-final against South Africa, we would accept that,” Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan said.
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