Canberra: One of the rarest incidents happened on Friday during the ongoing warm-up match between Australia Prime Minister XI and Pakistan as left-hand batter Matt Renshaw completed his half-century by scoring 'seven' runs on a single delivery.
The incident happened on the fifth delivery of the 78th over, bowled by right-arm spinner Abrar Ahmed. Matt Renshaw, who was batting on 47 runs pressed front foot forward and drived the outside off delivery through the gap of short covers and mid-off. Mir Hamza, who was fielding at mid-off had to do a length chase to collect the ball.
However, Hamza managed to save a boundary and threw the ball to the non-striker's end where Pakistan's former skipper Babar Azam collected the ball and threw it towards the wicket-keeper end but the wicket-keeper missed the stumps as it ran away to the fence for a boundary. In the process, Renshaw was given an additional four runs, increasing it a total of sevens, to bring up his fifty.
Interestingly, Cricket Australia have also shared the video on 'X', formerly known as Twitter saying, "You don't see this every day! Matthew Renshaw brings up his half-century ... with a seven! #PMXIvPAK".
The 27-year-old is being considered the strongest contender to replace veteran Australia opener David Warner, who has spoken about his retirement from test cricket after test series against Pakistan starting from December 14.
Earlier in the match, on the day 2, the unexpected incident occurred when openers Imam Ul Haq and Abdullah Shafique were batting and Fox Cricket, the official broadcasters of the match, didn't use the traditional abbreviation 'Pak' but instead went for the word 'Paki' to denote the Pakistan Team. Cricket Australia apologised to Australian journalist Danny Saeed, who escalated the issue by posting a snapshot 'X', formerly known as Twitter.
Before this, on day 1, Babar Azam was at the non striker's end and tried to stop the ball with his hand on the shot played by skipper Shan Masood. He almost got his glove to the ball but pulled back in time to avoid the possibility of denying his batting partner a few runs.
Coming to the match, Matt Renshaw's unbeaten 136-run knock powered Australia Prime Minister's XI to 367/4 at the end of the day 3. PM XI are trailing by only 24 runs in the first innings.
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