Posted by New Zealand dropped an honestly comical number of chances on day two of the first Test – most of them from Harry Brook. Tom Latham’s at slip was our favourite.
Friend of this website, Dr The Scientician was once outside a busy university library when there was a fire drill. As countless people responded to the deafening alarm by pouring out of the building, he spotted one guy walking the opposite way, carving his way through the throng, wearing headphones.
This image has always amused us. When there is only one way to sensibly go and someone goes the exact opposite way, it is funny.
With England 126-4, Harry Brook edged high to first slip where Tom Latham could only succeed in parrying the ball.
So far, so familiar. This is where it got fun though. Latham thought the ball had gone behind him, so he set off to try to catch it at the second attempt.
Only the ball hadn’t gone behind him. It had in fact gone pretty much straight up. But look at him go!
Your absolute overriding goal as a fielder is to catch the ball before it hits the turf after it has come off the bat. That’s basically what you’re there for. Here was a ball dropping from the sky in the gentlest, friendliest parabola imaginable and set to land exactly where Latham had been standing. And he was, essentially, fleeing.
This would in itself have made for an excellent missed chance, but New Zealand’s captain then put the top hat on it by extending his upturned hands in the vain hope the ball might just by complete chance plop into one of them.
It didn’t for the simple reason that it was at that very moment landing on the grass directly behind him.
Look at that image above. Isn’t there something quite exquisite about the way the back of Latham’s head is so perfectly trained on the ball as it hits the ground even while he is still trying to catch it?
New Zealand did take one decent catch – a ludicrous horizontal diving effort from Glenn Phillips – but we’ve seen that kind of thing before.
