Watch: Virat Kohli borrowed a trick from Stuart Broad to give India a key breakthrough in the first Test against South Africa, switching the bails on top of the stumps around shortly before a Jasprit Bumrah double strike.

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The Proteas had made good progress in response to India’s 245 in the Boxing Day Test at Centurion, moving past three figures for the loss of just one wicket. Bumrah, playing his first Test since July 2022, had bowled without reward and was into his second spell, with Dean Elgar and Tony de Zorzi resolute.

At this point, Kohli dipped into the Broad playbook, switching the bails around on top of the stumps. Bumrah then struck twice, nicking off De Zorzi before bowling Keegan Petersen off the inside-edge, with Kohli’s actions catching the eye of the commentators.

“The wicket of Tony de Zorzi, Jaiswal was involved, Bumrah was of course involved and Virat Kohli also had a role to play in that as well, you’d think,” said Sanjay Manjrekar. “Of course, I say that tongue in cheek.”

Broad’s original bail switch trick

Broad, who retired from international cricket earlier this year, twice switched the bails around on top of the stumps while playing his last Test, each time engineering a change in luck to bring about a breakthrough.

In the first innings, he did so during a Mark Wood over, with the speedster dismissing Marnus Labuschagne next ball. In the chase, he himself profited, with Todd Murphy nicked off late in the chase at The Oval.

“Now I’d heard changing the bails is an Aussie thing to attempt to change luck,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter) following the Wood wicket. “I’ve currently not had this confirmed by any Aussie- have I made that up?!”

“I’ve seen Nathan Lyon do it,” he added in the post-play press conference. “And I feel like I’ve seen Justin Langer do it.”

“Is that right?” he then asked Steve Smith, also in the press conference. “You’ve never heard of that. Could have just made that up! But we had a few play-and-misses in the morning session, we needed to make a breakthrough, and I though, ‘I’ll have a little change of the bails’. Marnus is someone who would notice everything so he took notice of it, and I think Ussie said something to him: ‘I’ve seen someone do that before.’ It just worked out pretty magically that he nicked the next ball and Rooty took a great catch. I randomly went and celebrated with Ussie for some reason. It was just a nice little change of bail to change the luck and it seemed to work for that ball.”

Watch: Kohli tries bail-swap trick

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Jasprit BumrahVirat Kohli2023-2025 World Test ChampionshipMatch CoverageSeries EditorialSouth Africa v India