Danger pitch stops SA test
games for Hyderabad over the past three seasons.
He won the title with them in 2016.
Bangalore also got in on the action for Williamson, but only made a couple of bids before withdrawing.
Fast bowlers Trent Boult, Mitchell McClenaghan and Tim Southee were to be auctioned later last night, as were leg- spinner Ish Sodhi and all-rounder Corey Anderson.
England’s New Zealand-born all-rounder Ben Stokes received the highest bid in the first four rounds of the auction, joining Rajasthan for 12.5 crore ($2.67 million), a price down on what he received last year.
Indian batsmen KL Rahul and Manish Pandey both went for 11 crore ($2.35 million) to Kings XI Punjab and Hyderabad respectively.
Left-arm quick Mitchell Starc joined fellow Australian Lynn at Kolkata, going for 9.4 crore ($2 million).
A record 578 cricketers were up for grabs at the auction, which continues today.
Five more New Zealanders were on offer yesterday, with 14 others to come today, but only if one of the eight teams expresses an interest in them.
Players who went unsold yesterday, like Guptill, could also be put up for auction again if a team expresses interest.
There were no bids for West Indian batsman Chris Gayle, who had a poor tour of New Zealand earlier this year, while England test captain Joe Root also went unsold. MATCH officials stopped play in the third cricket test between South Africa and India because of a dangerous pitch, an extremely rare decision taken after South African batsman Dean Elgar was hit in the grill of the helmet by a bouncer from fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah and needed a concussion test.
The move by match officials to take players off because of concerns over their safety was only the third time in the history of test cricket that a game has been stopped in this way.
The game wasn’t completely called off, though. After meetings involving match officials and team captains Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli, it was decided the test would continue, the International Cricket Council said.
‘‘The on-field umpires, in consultation with the match referee, and after speaking with both the captains and groundsmen, have decided that the Johannesburg Test will resume,’’ the ICC said in a statement.
Cricket’s ruling body said onfield umpires Ian Gould and Aleem Dar had called players off because they wanted to consult with match referee Andy Pycroft ‘‘regarding the condition of the pitch’’. The umpires would continue to monitor the pitch, the ICC said.
Elgar was the latest in a series of batsmen from both teams to be hit by the ball on a fast, bouncy and unpredictable surface at the Wanderers. He was the first to be hit on the head, though, with others getting struck on the fingers, and in the ribs and midriff. ‘‘I think that if it’s hitting the rib cage or the fingers, I think you can maybe get away with it,’’ South Africa team manager Mohammed Moosajee said.
‘‘But if it’s hitting a batsman in the face ...’’
There had been signs throughout the day that the umpires were worried over the surface, and both team managers were called into Pycroft’s office at the tea break to be told the officials were considering ruling the pitch dangerous.
The blow to Elgar’s helmet was the final straw.
The decision to stop play infuriated India, which had a 223-run lead and was in control of a game they desperately want to win after already losing the series and facing an embarrassing 3-0 whitewash.
Former West Indies fast bowler Michael Holding, a cricket great and working as a TV commentator at the Wanderers, said earlier in the day that the game should be stopped.
‘‘This is not a cricket pitch, this is dangerous. Call it off, forget it,’’ Holding told cricinfo.com. - AP