There was a moment of controversy during the Gujarat Titans (GT) vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) game in Ahmedabad on Thursday night when Jason Holder ran across the turf to take a brilliant catch to send back Rajat Patidar, but… did he actually catch it?
The RCB camp, with Virat Kohli leading the protests, didn't think so. Replays suggested that while Holder did take the ball cleanly, and held on to it while sliding across the turf, the ball might have touched the grass as Holder got up.
"We saw that the ball touched the ground, but I don't know what the umpire told [the players], so it's something within the law or whatever," RCB quick Bhuvneshwar Kumar said at the press conference after the game. "I have no idea about that but, yeah, we wanted to have the umpire to have a closer look at that." The TV umpire Abhijit Bhattacharya did take a look, and concluded that Holder had been in control of the ball for long enough for the batter to be given out.
Seeing that replay of the catch on the giant screen in Ahmedabad, Kohli and the others in the RCB dugout started protesting, remonstrating animatedly with reserve umpire Parashar Joshi groundside. But Bhattacharya was happy with what he saw, and Patidar had to go, leaving RCB at 79 for 3 in the eighth over. They reached 155, and GT crossed that with 25 balls in hand.
Back in the ESPNcricinfo studios, Ian Bishop and Abhinav Mukund had their say on the matter, and both were on the same side.
"My debate on it would be: Jason Holder, first he caught the ball, no problems with that. And then with the sliding of the hand initially, that deserved a second look," Bishop said. "And then you talk about control of the ball but also control of the body. So when you're looking to get yourself up having slid along the ground, are they determining that his fingers was under the ball?
"Because the back of the hand was to the sky, which means the ball was facing the grass. And so there was to me doubt there about ball and ground, because you're not in control of your body until you stop sliding and you stand up if you're going to do that.
So out or not out? "I think there was sufficient evidence in my mind for that to be [not out]," Bishop said.
The MCC's laws of cricket say that a catch is considered fair if the fielder has "complete control over the ball and their own movement before it [the ball] touches the ground".
That would make the catch valid, but Abhinav wasn't happy with it.
"To me that's not out because the ball should not touch the ground," he said. "If the ball touches the ground, then it clearly is not out. And there are multiple ways to get up. You're an extremely fit international athlete. You don't need your hands or a ball to get up. So that's where I stand in the whole matter.
"I know there's a lot of ambiguity in the law itself. But if the ball touches the ground, to me it's not out. And what I saw, which I'm sure the TV umpire did see and a lot of our viewers also saw, [was that] the ball touched the ground."
