Johannesburg — South Africa and Bangladesh bemoaned the delayed start to the first Test in Durban on Wednesday after the electronic portion of the sightscreen malfunctioned.
The start of play was delayed by 34 minutes, with ground staff struggling to find the right covering for the sightscreen with the electronic part not fading back to white after adverts had been displayed. The ground staff couldn’t find a white sheet to cover the offending areas, with a net — something more akin for usage by the fishermen down the road — not doing the job. Eventually a thicker set of nets had to be used.
“(That kind of delay) is most frustrating as a batter,” Proteas debutant Ryan Rickelton said after play on Thursday. Although he didn’t have to open the innings, he has experience from doing so provincially and said the mental triggers for the opening batters would have been put out of sync. “You’ve worked your times out, how you prepare mentally and obviously structure wise the way you play your game and to have that 30 minutes gap ... you switch on and switch off and you just burn through a bit of mental energy. Luckily it didn’t cost us.”
Dean Elgar and Sarel Erwee shared a first wicket partnership of 113 runs, to give South Africa an early advantage after Mominul Haque chose to field first.
Russell Domingo, Bangladesh’s coach, felt the delay did hamper his bowlers. “It wasn't great. There is a big difference between 10 am and 10.30 that half an hour didn’t do us any favours,” said Domingo.
“There was a little bit of cloud cover at 10am, and with the grass on the surface we could have used that, but of course we didn’t get on in time.”
More time was lost at the end of the day with the umpires taking the teams off field despite the sun still shining, for bad light. “I think that was more a player safety issue,” said Domingo. “I think it was great that we managed to get through to 5.20pm because that hardly ever happens in Durban. We nearly got a full day's play in, which is good., that doesn't happen here often."
IOL Sport