Hosts South Africa were at their dominating best against the touring Bangladesh side; as the Proteas registered a thumping 332-win in the second and the final game of the series. Left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj spun a web around the tourists’ batting lineup to claim 9 wickets from the game and end up as the player of the match and the series combined.
Bangladesh, meanwhile, looked completely out-of-sorts against the very team that they managed to convincingly overcome in the preceding ODI series a few weeks back. This series defeat just goes to show that despite their sporadic stints of success in the white-ball format, the team’s form in red-ball cricket still has a long way to go.
The Bangladeshi players’ frustration in being unable to dismiss the South African batters was quite conspicuous during several points of the game. Things, however, really came to a head early during the second day of the match when fast-bowler Khaled Ahmed was bowling to Kyle Verreynne.
Khaled Ahmed tries to ‘run-out’ Kyle Verreynne with a dangerous back-throw
Bowling the 95th over of the innings, Khaled lobbed a short-delivery that sharply nipped back in. Verreynne gently punched it off the backfoot towards the bowler’s direction. That’s when the situation got ugly, as Khaled collected the ball and lobbed it back at Verreynne in what looked like a spectacularly unlikely run-out attempt.
Verreynne, thankfully, managed to avoid the ball and any potential damage to his body. Khaled and the Bangladeshi players were quick to apologize, but the 24-year-old Proteas keeper bat wasn’t in mood to take any unwarranted aggression. He walked up to Khaled and exchanged a few quick, heated words with the pacer before umpire Marais Erasmus walked up to the duo to restore some normalcy.
As it turned out, things did calm down eventually, but not before Erasmus had had a few words with Bangladesh skipper Mominul Haque; most likely ordering him to calm down Khaled. It remains to be seen how the cricketing authorities come down on Khaled’s display of aggression and if he’s awarded any demerit points. Here’s the video of the incident:
Absolutely unnecessary, embarrassing, and disgraceful. Surely this warrants a fine + demerit points for Khaled Ahmed. Awful attempt to show aggression.
Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be an attitude issue that needs to be fixed when it comes to Bangladesh cricket. #SAvBAN pic.twitter.com/ElgW75oktT
— Abhai (@Abhai_BTTG) April 10, 2022
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Brief scores: South Africa 453 and 176/6 d beat Bangladesh 217 and 80 by 332 runs. Player of the match and series: Keshav Maharaj
