The Jason Roy catch: Has any wicket in the history of cricket featured a greater gulf in quality between bowling and fielding?

The Bangladesh Premier League doesn’t allow anyone from outside Bangladesh to watch the highlights online because we’ve no idea why they don’t allow that. What are they hoping we’ll do? Pay for flights to Bangladesh?

Fortunately, you can find grainy footage of Jason Roy’s catch for Sylhet Sixers against Chittagong Vikings on social media. It is notable for two reasons.

The first reason is that it was an amazing catch. The second reason is the delivery off which the catch was taken.

Filth

A friend of ours still slips into a misty-eyed reverie at the memory of one particular piece of Mike Atherton commentary. It wasn’t particularly insightful; it just summed up a moment perfectly.

The bowler sent one down the leg-side for byes and after a perfectly-timed pause to allow the viewer to take this in, Athers muttered in disgust: “Well that’s just filth.”

You could tell he meant it.

Alok Kapali’s delivery was pure filth. It was the kind of long hop that can only ever be described as ‘rank’. Bowling at under 100km/h, he pitched the ball in his own half.

Yasir Ali duly slogged it miles, right towards the boundary, nowhere near a human fielder, but in the vague direction of the Superman/Inspector Gadget hybrid that is Jason Roy.

Roy sprinted, leapt like a crested salmon and then extended a telescopic arm to grab the ball as it attempted to pass him at the speed of a comet.

Jason Roy took the exact catch you fantasised about when you were a kid and he did it off a delivery that was pure filth.

The chasm in quality

Has there ever been a greater contrast between the quality of the ball bowled and the quality of the fielding that resulted in a wicket? We’d argue not.

Roy’s catch was basically unimprovable, so you’d need to find a wicket taken off a worse delivery for a start.

Mohammad Ashraful once dismissed AB de Villiers off a ball that bounced twice, but it wasn’t much of a catch. We can also think of occasions when someone’s been stumped off a leg-side wide – but again that sort of fielding’s really not in the same league as Roy’s.

Yasir Ali, caught Jason Roy, bowled Alok Kapali was the wicket with the greatest gulf in quality between bowling and fielding.