Plays of the day from the game between Australia and Sri Lanka in Sydney
Andrew Fidel Fernando, Daniel Brettig and Jarrod Kimber08-Mar-2015The stumping
Aaron Finch has spent an awful lot of time thinking about how to combat the swinging ball lately, given that he was bowled by it in Auckland off the inside edge and was then pouched in the slips in Perth off the outside edge. Sydney presented a rather different challenge: not offering much to the pacemen and causing him to face up to spin early in his innings – the second over even. Having seen off Sachithra Senanayake’s off breaks, the leg breaks of Seekkuge Prasanna posed another question, and Finch presumed a little too hastily to know the answer when he hurtled down to a delivery that the bowler speared down the leg side for a snappy stumping from Kumar Sangakkara. Hobart will no doubt bring Finch another challenge again.The leg-bye
Sitting on 99, Glenn Maxwell had the chance to equal Kevin O’Brien’s record for the fastest World Cup hundred. Virtually the whole of the SCG, including umpire Ian Gould, thought he had done it, when Maxwell appeared to glance a ball behind square leg for the single he required. Spectators roared and rose to applaud, Gould’s leg and arm remained stationary, and Maxwell trotted through. But when he reached the far end without celebrating, he quietly advised the umpire that he had not hit it, and a leg-bye was signalled. This was a level of sportsmanship many a club cricketer would consider too generous by half, and certainly caught out the crowd. Among them was Brian Lara, who could remember not giving Terry Prue the chance to signal the same when he ran through for the runs that gave him 200 on this ground in the first week of 1993. Lara had celebrated before completing the run, but Maxwell did not have long to wait, finding his hundred the next over.The height
So much height. It was like Steven Smith was trying to see how high he could hit Tillakaratne Dilshan. At mid-off there was a dot under the ball. It went back, forward, left, right and pretty much every direction it was possible to move in. As if it wasn’t a fielder, but a kid with a laser pointer. It really was a pretty straight forward catch, that was made better by the 19 changes in direction the ball seemed to make in the air, and Thisara Perera actually did on the ground. When he finally took the ball, his balance was so poor he just fell over. His hands were the real stars.The three pairs of fours
Scoring 24 four runs in an over is no longer particularly remarkable, but unusually, Tillakaratne Dilshan made all 24 runs off boundaries, in Mitchell Johnson’s third over. Even more unusually, the boundaries were all hit in pairs. The first two came down the ground as Johnson overpitched. Then when the bowler tried to bounce Dilshan, he was smashed behind backward square leg twice. Finally, Johnson delivered length outside off, but Dilshan was on to that, too. The fifth ball, slightly overpitched, was creamed through cover. Then, when the bowler pulled the length back slightly Dilshan pushed the ball through the gap, timing it just well enough to beat the fielder giving chase.The headgear
Ireland’s John Mooney has already invented a “gorget” addition to his helmet, which is designed to protect the back of a batsman’s head and neck. On Sunday, at the site of Phillip Hughes’ accident, two Sri Lanka players wore a new factory-made “Stemguard”, made from foam and rubber, which is said to absorb the force of any hits received to that area. Kumar Sangakkara and Angelo Mathews wore the Masuri attachment, and if Sangakkara’s 104 is anything to go by, their movement was seemingly unaffected by the addition.
