Catches Win Matches
We’ve all heard Ravi Shastri, Arun Lal and Harsha Bhogle say this phrase so many times “catches win matches” and now it has started holding true for almost every format of cricket.
Initially people had this “hoity-toity” attitude while playing a test match, where cricketers wouldn’t like to even run too hard to get the ball while it was racing down the boundary line, now we have cricketers like Paul Collingwood (England) who literally fling themselves at the ball as if their lives depended on it.
It’s no longer satisfactory for a player to just have batting and bowling skills, he must have the whole package. The best example of this would be Jonty Rhodes (South Africa). He had a test batting average of 35.66 and an ODI average of 35.11, he is remembered today because of his impeccable fielding.
So, test cricket managed to take that leap and give due importance to fielding in a game of cricket so heavily dominated by a batsman. ODI’s (One day international) on the other hand gave fielding more of an opportunity, because of making it a shorter format with only 50 over’s for each side, cricketers slowly began to understand the importance of a single run when matches would go down to the wire. We saw the likes of Herschelle Gibbs (South Africa) and Tillakaratne Dilshan ( Sri Lanka) come to the forefront showing how a simple run out can shake the opposing side and break crucial partnerships.
The only sensible outcome with the introduction of the T20 (twenty -twenty) format of cricket has been the quality of fielding in spite of power plays and free hits. So now, with the beginning of T20, if a player is not a good fielder he isn’t even considered as part of the team 11.
India has a handful of good fielders like Suresh Raina, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh etc. But what are truly fascinating to watch are the likes of Munaf Patel and Ashish Nehra who used to be such klutzes that it was like watching Laurel and Hardy slip on a banana peel. Both of them are returning to the Indian ODI team after battling injuries; they have shown top class fielding on the boundary line as well as in terms of catches.
The previous ODI of India vs. New Zealand that took place in Guwahati on the 28th of November where India won by 40 runs was the best example of that. Munaf Patel took 2 important catches and saved several runs, Ashish Nehra in T20 as well as in ODI’s has been showing consistently good fielding.
With the number of all rounder’s increasing, India will have a wide variety to choose from for the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011.
Tags: Arun Lal, Catch, Catches Win Matches, Cricket, Gautam Gambhir, Harsha Bhogle, Ravi Shastri, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh
