There was a unique game of cricket played in South Africa yesterday. Normally you see two teams go head to head against each other in a cricket match, but in the new 3TC format the Cricket South Africa (CSA) introduced yesterday, three teams competed against each other in a single match.
All the three teams had 8 players each and they were supposed to play two innings of 36 balls each. The last batsman standing was also allowed to bat alone, something which doesn’t happen in conventional cricket. The penalty for a no ball was two runs, rather than one.
The order of the batting teams in the second innings was decided on the basis of the no. of runs that they scored in the first innings.
Eventually at the end of the whole game, whichever team scored the most runs in the two innings together won the Gold, while the teams at no. 2 and no. 3 won the Silver and the Bronze respectively.
It was a much anticipated game for two reasons. First, the cricket was resuming in South Africa after a while and secondly, AB de Villiers was making a comeback as well. The fans were really keen to see what kind of form De Villiers was in after staying away from the game for so long.
De Villiers smashed 61 off 24 balls and entertained one and all, but apart from De Villiers’ batting, there was another interesting event in the game which caught everyone’s eye.
The game was played without any spectators, but there was one certain guy who was allowed to enter the stadium for some unknown reasons and he had interestingly held a net in his hand.
The man was using the net to catch the balls which were hit over the ropes and out of his many attempts, he finally succeeded in catching one.
His jubilation after the catch was as if he had taken a wicket himself. He was jumping and fist pumping all over the place. It was quite a scene.
Well, he had all the rights to celebrate as well. Net catching is not that common in cricket after all.
Watch the “Net Catch” here –
https://twitter.com/faceplatter49/status/1284486216323182593?s=20
