The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)

Cheeky Boult, lucky Boult

When a full toss veered onto the off-stump, Trent Boult, who fancies himself asa hard hitting bats man and has centuries to show in the club circuit in Tauranga, where he still turns up with his brother Jono, made room for himself and tried to steer the ball towards the fence. the ball travel led where he had designed to, though it hit the upper half of his bat. Boult grinned. The next ball was a yorker, a neat one on the leg-stump. He tried to work it on the leg-side, but it took an inside edge, ricocheted off his body and lobbed over the keeper to the boundary. He hadn’t the slightest idea of where he had played the ball, as he was franticall­y searching for it, but it yielded the same resultas the previous ball. king seven burned a review. Boult would keep grinning. Later on, Trent Boult getting a wicket in the first overt 20 matches is nothing new. so when he did dismiss pr abh sim ran singh to begin RR'S defence of what appeared to be a low total, there should be no eyebrows raised. But in the moments leading up to that dismissal,there wasn' t certainty. a close up of Bo ult' sf ace actually conveyed the emotions of a worried man because at short-third

stood Yuzvendra Chahal, when the ball went high up. Chahal is not the most accomplish­ed fielder you'd come across in the tournament. So when he went down on his back even before the ball finished its downwardcu­rve,itseemedad­ropwasimmi­nent. But using a clumsy reverse-cup technique that didn't quite qualify for Australian,chahalsome­howheldon.what would have been an easy catch, eventually made it uneasily into Chahal's hands and Boult broke into a smile. Never in doubt.