I remember watching that live on TV. It was just thrillingly horrific… literally watching the poor bastard’s career unravelling before my very eyes. Cos it was pretty obvious even at the time that it wasn’t something he could just bounce back from

Oh, it seems to be regionblocked in a browser.

The youtube app on mobile devices plays all the highlight videos without any fuss.

We can see precisely one highlights video. Although, to be fair, it is the one for best catches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh3nfzqn4QI

Yeah, shod is shod even if it’s the right line and length. Filth is poor execution. Shod is more fundamentally shit.

Special mention to Scott Boswell in the 2001 C&G trophy final. That somehow managed to be filth and shod at the same time!

I would suggest filth is when a proper bowler produces a pie like this one; see also: first ball of Ashes 2006/07; Graeme Swann’s full toss that hit ‘Buckie’ Rogers on the arse and saw him given LBW?

Shod, on the other hand, is when a non-proper-bowler turns his arm over, e.g. Alastair Cook, round-arm thereof.

Both are hilarious and an essential part of quality cricket but the latter far more heart-warming.

Never mind the possible boundary – what I kept thinking each time I watched that was “how the hell did he not injure himself?” – JRoy lands with the hands down, an instinctive reaction for most people in a fall, but also (as anyone who’s done martial arts will tell you) a very good way to break one or both of your wrists. Given that one of those hands is also holding a cricket ball, it looks (to me) worse every time I see it. I keep expecting a comminuted fracture to ensue.

As for your point, you may well be right. Perhaps the catch was thought to be so good that nobody wanted to spoil it by checking the rope…

From the footage on youtube then I’m not 100% sure that his elbow doesn’t brush the boundary “rope”. The footage stops just before showing it on each of the angles that would mean something. This seems suspicious to me.

In answer to the question in the article, there was a greater gulf in the only wicket that I ever took. It was a dolly of the catch but it was so bad a delivery that the batsman only attempted to hit it to stop the over going on for eternity via wides and the one day game being called off for bad light halfway through the opening innings.