The Hindu : Sport : Butterfingers are toast of the week

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Wednesday, Mar 22, 2006

Sport

Sport

Butterfingers are toast of the week

In a Test high on spill thrills, Freddie holds the key, writes Ted Corbett

— PHOTO: S. SUBRAMANIUM

UNSAFE HANDS: Fielders from both sides had a forgettable Test with even the usually brilliant Yuvraj Singh spilling some catches.

MUMBAI: It has been a series of injuries, debuts and a third Test marked by dropped catches: nine by India, four by England. Tuesday was slow but the spectators cannot complain about boredom. If all the catches had been held, there would be no match at all for it would have ended in three days.

I cannot find anyone who can tell me why so many chances have been spilled. Former Test players, some of them great catchers like David Gower, Nasser Hussain and Ian Botham, stand at every corner, yet there seems to be no generally accepted reason for this inability to keep the ball in hand.

It is odd too isn't it that Geraint Jones, blamed for missing 20 catches while he snaffled 94 during his career of 26 Tests, held five in the first Indian innings, three out of the top drawer.

One of his catches will earn its own place in history, especially as it was, in truth, a non-catch. Jones dived to take the match-winner — and probably, all things considered the Ashes winner — off the final ball of the Edgbaston Test. That result, followed by the edge-of-the-seats, don't miss a second, Test at Old Trafford and the pulsating win at Trent Bridge that prompted cries of "to hell with the football, the job and the wife."

Debate about Jones

All this, thanks to a man from Papua New Guinea who has split the country. Should he be played for his runs at No. 7? I think he will be, so long as Duncan Fletcher is the coach.

Bob Taylor, the perfect keeper, as careful, neat and fastidious as an old-fashioned butler, was here with a party of supporters. He is a kindly man, like most cricketers, and he would rather say nothing than criticise a member of the current team. When our talk turned to Jones, he fell silent, a remarkable feat for a man who never stopped chattering when he was a player, who loved the social scene and whose nickname was Chat.

His Derbyshire captain all those years ago was Brian Bolus, who once told me that if Taylor dropped a ball there would be no other topic of conversation in their dressing room for a week. A ball thrown awkwardly, a grubber on a bad wicket, a ball diverted off the stumps. If he did not gather that cleanly, there was the sort of silence in the grounds at Derby, Chesterfield and Repton that might have indicated a death in the house.

Harbhajan gets a grip

As I write, Harbhajan Singh has snatched a one-handed catch, diving left to dismiss Paul Collingwood and gone careering round the ground to celebrate like Michael Slater after a century or Pat Cash at Wimbledon.

You can understand his point. While others have dropped catches into their chests, he has caught a screamer — as Jones did to get Harbhajan out, funnily enough, and set the crowd singing. None of this shows why so many have been spilled. Just one of those things I guess.

England's go-slow tactics — which must have been admired by some of those union chiefs from the 1960s — came in part because they are so weakened by injury that they do not know what to expect from Flintoff's Foundlings. I thought before the match that if England was to win, Flintoff might have to play the major innings and take most of the wickets.

His long, patient knock on Tuesday will have drained him but on the morrow, he will derive energy from the knowledge that a win here will fly round the world and cause even those ever so positive Australians to wonder about the special force that is Freddie.

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