Masood felt that the images Hawkeye threw up did not match the reality of what had happened after that delivery. “It’s simple,” Masood said after the game ended. “It was an outswinger. If you look at the ball that I was hit by, it went way off. I was hit on the outside edge and it showed as an inswinger. I was amazed by that to be very honest.”
Masood, who had batted more or less chancelessly for over six hours over two days for his innings, had looked largely untouched on the fourth morning until that delivery. Maphaka, bowling from the left arm across to the left-handed Masood, landed it on a length and made the ball stay a touch low as he headed past the outside edge as Masood tried to defend it, fielded him and beat him on back cushion.
On review, Hawkeye deemed the ball to have hit Masood in line with the off-stump, and did not show any significant deviation away from the stumps that would have saved him. “To the naked eye, you could tell it felt like it was out of line as well. I just felt like it was a different picture. I wasn’t hit where Hawkeye showed it was hit. I was hit more on the outside leg than the inside; it’s not an inswinger, I was hit by an outswinger and that’s what the umpire can say too.
Masood made no attempt to hide his displeasure as the images came up on the screen. He stood rooted to the spot for a long period, gesticulating in disagreement. As he turned to trudge off, he still wore an expression of anger and frustration. Walking up to the pavilion, he again gestured in an outward arc with his hands to mimic the movement of the ball.
“It’s up to the administrators to see if it’s a fair decision or not, but I definitely felt the technology didn’t show the pitch of what the ball was like,” Masood said.
Pakistan had ended up on the right side of an lbw decision before lunch, also off the bowling of Maphaka. Saud Shakeel was knocked on the pad as the ball angled towards the leg stump and on that occasion too Menon had ruled it not out. South Africa did not declare and Hawkeye indicated it would have hit leg stump.
