Monday, 27 February 2006
Astle's catch
Nathan Astle's catch has been replayed so many times that I am becoming a bit blase about the whole thing. However, watching it live on TV was magical. Astle just seemed to hang in the air for ever. I think only the fact that the ball was travelling at a slightly slower speed made the catch less spectacular than Matthew Sinclair's take from Matthew Hayden two seasons ago. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and Richard Boock, who has also taken the time to compare catches, thinks Astle's catch was better.
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2 comments:
It was a great catch, but over the years there have been so many great catches it's too hard to say what is the greatest.
One that still sticks with me is from my childhood. I recall watching on TV New Zealand playing Australia at the MCG. In fact, the catch was so great I can still see it vividly. I can't recall a big hit by Greg Chappell and Martin Snedden, sprinting what seemed like 50 metres in the outfield before launching himself headlong to grab the catch an inch off the ground.
Lynn McConnell, in 2003, wrote on CricInfo about the MCG's 150th birthday and said "New Zealanders might also recall what some observers described as the greatest of all outfield catches, taken by the man who is now New Zealand Cricket's chief executive, Martin Snedden, off Greg Chappell; the appeal for the catch was subsequently turned down by the umpires."
http://content-nz.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/133896.html
Yes karl, I was actually there. A fine catch "that wasn't". Something else happened later that day... :-(
There has been a lot of talk about great catches lately especially after some special ones from Hussey and Ponting in the VB Series, and I started looking over some old footage on Google Video. Matthew Sinclair's catch off Matt Hayden is definetly the best from my point of view. Hayden also featured in the Collingwood catch in England last year - also a ripper.
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