In the 21st over, shortly before lunch, Smith pushed at the Ebadot delivery and Bangladesh celebrated straightaway only for Kumar Dharmasena to shake his head. Najmul Hossain Shanto called the review and Smith was starting to walk off the field only for there to be no spike on the replay.
“I think so, yeah,” he said when asked if he had nicked the ball. “I was lucky? Yeah, it seems that way. You got to take it sometimes.”
Last season’s Ashes series featured frequent controversies around the Real-Time Snicko technology used in Australia as part of the DRS package although those stemmed more from images and audio spikes not lining up rather than a flat line as in the Smith scenario.
“Normally, it’s [the technology] pretty good,” Smith said. “Maybe I didn’t nick it. I don’t know. But I certainly felt something. If I’d get being given out, I was going to walk off. But yeah, technology saved me today, I guess.”
It continued a charmed start to Smith’s innings – “I actually forgot how to hold the bat for my first 30 balls. I’m not going to lie,” he told Fox Cricket – after he had been given a life on 2 when dropped, low down, at third slip by Tanzid Hasan.
Bangladesh remains the only Test nation of the ones Smith has played against where he has yet to register a century, albeit this is just the third time he has faced them.
