Australia Catch a Wave

GH watches the home team go 2-0 up

Nothing so deflates a team as a dropped catch; nothing so elevates a team as a great catch. The Second Test evidenced both. On Friday night, England’s fielders did more to break their bowlers than Australia’s batters. And today, as Australia’s bowlers searched and probed, probed and search, Steve Smith and Alex Carey curbed England’s lead with fielding to lift a whole nation.

‘I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips…’ Henry V

Will Jacks had provided the solitary exception to England’s cack-handedness on the second evening by diving at backward square leg to catch Smith one-handed. In catching Jacks one-handed, Smith cancelled this out and more. It was in many ways a manufactured intervention, with a degree of difficulty introduced - Smith had come closer at slip to shadow Carey’s creeping up to the stumps as Neser ran in from the Stanley Street End.

You can take a chance on this when you’ve already taken more than 200 Test catches, and have had a good long bat and field on surface scored with fourth day cracks. Though his view was partly obscured by the keeper’s right knee, Smith seemed to be diving left almost before the ball was edged, having detecting the hint of extra bounce and the rigidity of the defensive bat - at any rate, it was as though he had imagined the catch before it came.