Brisbane Heat topple Hobart Hurricanes amid catch controversy over Matthew Wade’s dismissal
Brisbane Heat has claimed victory over Hobart, chasing down a small total after Hurricanes captain Matthew Wade was controversially given his marching orders in a bizarre dismissal. Should it have been a six? VOTE
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Hobart’s Big Bash batting fragilities and a third straight win for Brisbane Heat have been overshadowed by the controversial dismissal of Matthew Wade at the Gabba.
Batting first, the returning Test batsman was doing his best to lift the Hurricanes to a reasonable total, before finding Matthew Renshaw on the mid-on rope.
Renshaw caught the ball, stumbled towards the rope and lobbed it in the air as he fell over the boundary.
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It looked as if Wade (61 off 46) would collect six runs for his troubles, before Renshaw jumped in the air while standing outside the field of play and parrying the ball to the waiting Tom Banton.
The catch was reviewed and, after a lengthy delay, Wade, who admitted soon after the dismissal he wasn’t sure of the rule, was sent on his way.
“His [Renshaw’s] reaction was quite subdued so I don’t think he really knew the rule either and neither did I, but once the umpire told me that you are allowed to leave the field of play and touch the ball again, as long as you are up when you touch it, I knew I was out,” Wade said.
“I have never seen that done. I think it is just going to bring great clarity to the rule for all the players, now that we know I’m sure it will be exposed at some stage.
“I’ve got no grudges, I was happy to go. No one has really talked about it up to this point so obviously it hasn’t been too much of an issue, but will it be in the future? Maybe.
“Maybe players could expose it in the future but they would have to do a hell of a job to do it.
“I think if you can just keep jumping up and tapping it then jumping up and tapping it, that’s when the rule might get exposed a little bit.
“It’s just a bit of a strange one, we play a lot of sports where you can’t come from outside the field of play and touch the ball again.”
The catch was a polarising one but it was nothing new, with England’s Sam Billings pulling off a similar effort to dismiss James Faulkner while batting for the Prime Minister’s XI two years ago.
Glenn Maxwell also perfected a solo effort in similar circumstances in a 2015 ODI.
All three catches are deemed legal thanks to an MCC rule change in October 2013 designed to encourage more athletic fielding.
The rule states the fielder, as long as first contact with the ball is made inside the boundary, can parry the ball as many times as they like while airborne outside the boundary.
Banton’s catch was one of two screamers for the Heat. Ben Laughlin later sending the 29,749-strong crowd into raptures with a one-handed blinder off his own bowling to remove Clive Rose.
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Such highlights would not have been possible without a pitch-perfect bowling performance from the Heat, who, at one stage, reduced the Hurricanes to 5-59.
Josh Lalor (3-21) was superb at both ends of the innings, Laughlin (2-21 from four overs), Zahir Khan (1-20) and Cutting (1-12) applied constant dot-ball pressure on their home turf and Renshaw’s two overs of spin yielded the key wicket of Caleb Jewell as the ‘Canes slumped to 9-126 at close.
Brisbane threatened a meltdown of their own with the bat, losing 5-36 as Scott Boland (3-16) ripped through the hosts’ top order, but a miracle wasn’t to be as Ben Cutting (43no off 29) and Jimmy Peirson (23no off 25) put on 60 runs for the sixth wicket to cruise home with 10 balls to spare.
The pair initially crawled along at less than a run a ball before Cutting let loose in the 16th over, carting Tom Rogers for successive sixes and putting the Heat chase back on track.
Originally published as Brisbane Heat topple Hobart Hurricanes amid catch controversy over Matthew Wade’s dismissal