ICC makes plethora of blunders while tweeting the India vs South Africa Day 3 report

Team India continued their dominance over the South Africans on Day 3. Despite a valiant 100+ partnership between seamer Vernon Philander and off-spinner Keshav Maharaj; one that kept Indian bowlers at bay for over 40 overs. Starting the day at 3/36, South Africa needed the likes of Theunis de Bruyn, Quinton de Kock, and Faf du Plessis to show some resistance and dig their side out of that 601-run sized hole.

But, unfortunately, De Bruyn didn’t hang around for a long time. The South African No.3 and night watchman Anrich Nortje succumbed against the pace and accuracy of Shami and Umesh Yadav, leaving the duo of Du Plessis and De Kock to do all the running.

The duo started out with positive intent, especially against the spinners, and soon ticked off the first goal: Getting past the 100-run mark. But, just as it was looking that South Africa is finally building towards a big partnership, Ravichandran Ashwin showed his class.

The veteran bowler, who recently equaled Muttiah Muralitharan’s record of being the fastest to reach 350 Test wickets (in 66 Tests), proceeded to knock over Quinton de Kock with a perfect off-spinners dismissal: pitching it on middle and straightening enough to knock the top of off-stump.

Senuran Muthuswamy’s dismissal; one in which Ravindra Jadeja did not even appeal was followed by another Crowd invasion. This time, at the receiving end, was Rohit Sharma. Faf du Plessis notched up his second half-century of the series before Ashwin induced an outside edge from the skipper’s bat.

ICC makes multiple gaffes while uploading the days’ report

At 8/162, the murmurs had started to begin as to whether India will enforce the follow-on or not? But, then again, Indian bowlers troubled history against the tailenders reared its head once again. Maharaj and Philander defied India for 43.1 overs before Ashwin finally wrapped up the proceedings. 

So, naturally, the International Cricket Council posted the days report its Twitter handle and made some glaring errors in it. The ICC captioned it as “Philander and Maharaj shared a 109-run partnership but couldn’t stop India finishing off the South African innings by stumps. #INDvSA DAY TWO REPORT.’

What caught the eyes of the fans was the last 3 words: DAY TWO REPORT, when it actually should have been ‘DAY THREE REPORT’. And, it was not only the tweet. A closer look at the report that the ICC uploaded, the subtitle ran as ‘Ind v SA, 2nd Test, day two report’- again calling it day 02 when it should have been day 03.

Despite the fans calling out the error, the International Cricket Council had still not rectified the error at the time of writing this article.