HOSTILE RECEPTION
Adelaide crowd brings out best in SA captain
To the sound of one hand clapping and the noise a tree makes — or does not make — when it falls unseen in a forest, we can now add the sonic strangeness of the batsman who is booed when he scores a century. Faf du Plessis was that batsmen in Adelaide on Thursday, where his undefeated 118 dug SA out of a hole 117/5 deep on the first day of the third Test against Australia. The visitors recovered well enough to declare on 258/9, which would seem more than a few runs light were it not for the fact that the match is SA’s first in the brave new world of pink-ball, day night Test cricket. Simply, no one has a clue how many runs make a decent total. Just as the 32,255 who turned up on Thursday did not know how to behave when Du Plessis reached his sixth Test ton. Nonsense. Of course they knew, and they would have done the right thing had Du Plessis not been convicted on Tuesday of ball-tampering. But their booing, which was at its loudest when Du Plessis took guard, still caught him short....
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