When we were growing up in Hyderabad, there were days when we got swarms of flying insects virtually enveloping a light. Somebody told us that if you placed a large flat vessel full of water under the light, the insects would fall into it. It worked. I suspect we are now seeing the equivalent of that old grandmother’s remedy here in South Africa because catches are going down faster than the insects did those days! It is inexplicable but now that it has become an epidemic, somebody has to find a reason and then, hopefully, a cure!

You can understand batsmen struggling to come to terms with the bounce or the bowlers discovering that there is life beyond holding the ball seam up and hitting the deck hard in South Africa. But how does one explain catches going down? In T20 cricket we have now reached a stage where fielding standards are expected to be high; where really, an ordinary fielder rather than a brilliant one, should stand out. That hasn’t happened because the fielding has been pretty average and that is disappointing.

Jonty Rhodes threw some light on it a few days ago when he talked about the difference between playing on the coast (Capetown, Port Elizabeth) and playing on the highlands (Johannesburg, Pretoria) or the highveld as they are called here. Because of the high altitude the ball travels further and so fielders might find the ball going a bit behind them as they wait for it. More interestingly, he said, the ball comes down much faster than you think it is going to and so you can be caught out of position. The obvious solution therefore is to practise a lot of skiers. Now while Jonty’s local knowledge, and his enormous skill, clears the air a bit, it still doesn’t explain why fielders are not catching more high balls in practice. Or maybe they are and it isn’t working. In fact, I remember a game in East London where the Chennai Super Kings had again dropped a few, catching practice had begun even as the presentation was going on.

... contd.