Due to the soft outfield in Durban South Africa and New Zealand, both the teams were extremely disappointed and frustrated after playing their four out of 15 sessions. But both stressed on the safety of players after the match ended in a draw.
Du Plessis spoke about the condition. “It’s up to the umpires to make an assessment of whether the ground is safe or not. As cricketers or sportsmen, we generally don’t look at all the factors, we just want to get out there. From our perspective, we wanted to play but the general feeling was that the ground was unsafe,” said Du Plessis.
“There were quite a few areas that were a bit muddy and a bit loose on the foot. They were very worried that if you were to sprint or make sudden movements on it, you could get badly injured. The message was pretty clear from the umpires that player safety was their main concern and we respect that,” he added.
On the wet outfield, Kiwi coach Hesson said, “From the time we arrived at this Test match, we knew that the outfield was in a poor state and obviously it just didn’t cope with the rain,”
“The covers on the ground brought the difference where the conditions could have permitted some play to take place. Du Plessis even admitted he would have been happy to field close-in, but it was the outlying areas that posed a danger,” he told.
Du Plessis also admitted that he did not want any of the players to be injured in the process of a wet outfield, “If we had got on the field and a bad injury happened, both teams would have been pretty upset. From a captain’s point of view, if one of your strike bowlers ran around the boundary and hurt himself by doing it, you would be upset,” he said.
The seamers had a good run in the middle as the conditions favoured them that provided them reasons to smile. Dale Steyn was the spearhead with two wickets nabbing opening batsmen Tom Latham and martin Guptill on Day Two. Earlier, South Africa were bowled out for 262, thanks to Trent Boult and Neil Wagner rattling the Proteas.