Jason Holder’s sliding grab to remove Rajat Patidar in Ahmedabad on Thursday handed Gujarat Titans a handy early breakthrough and, at the same time, reopened cricket’s perennial “Did it carry?” argument.
The on-field umpires sent the decision upstairs; third umpire Abhijit Bhattacharya looked, looked again, and ruled Patidar out. Replays on the big screen showed Holder clutching the ball, tumbling, then using the same, ball-filled right hand to push himself back to his feet. In the Royal Challengers Bengaluru dug-out Virat Kohli stood, arms out, insisting the ball had grazed the turf. He was not alone.
“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 seamer Bhuvneshwar Kumar said afterwards. “I have no idea about that but, yeah, we wanted to have the umpire to have a closer look at that.”
Bhattacharya’s judgement – that Holder controlled ball and body long enough – stood. Patidar walked for 10; RCB, 79 for 3 at that stage, mustered 155 all told. Titans knocked those off with four-and-a-bit overs spare. Points banked, controversy lingering.
Back in the studio, former West Indies quick Ian Bishop was reluctant to let the matter rest. “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,” he 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.”
Pressed: out or not? Bishop was frank. “I think there was sufficient evidence in my mind for that to be [not out].”
Abhinav Mukund, sitting alongside, agreed and went further. “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 the law is 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.”
The law behind the fuss
The MCC wording (Law 33.3, if you fancy looking it up) states a catch is complete when the fielder has “complete control over the ball and their own movement before it touches the ground”. The grey area, of course, lies in interpreting “control” – not merely of the ball but of “their own movement”. Is sliding on one hip and planting the free hand while still grasping the ball control? Umpires – and occasionally lawyers – differ.
Bhattacharya clearly felt Holder ticked both boxes. The West Indian certainly never lost contact with the ball. Yet the visual of shiny white Kookaburra and short-cut grass in fleeting contact kept replay editors busy and social media hotter than usual.
Technical take
Slow-motion, especially the modern, many-frame sort, can create its own optical illusion. A split-second where the ball burrows into soft turf may look longer – or more significant – than it actually is. Equally, fingers flexing under pressure can appear to lift but might simply be cushioning the ball. Former wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik, commentating at the ground, summed that up succinctly off-mic: “Sometimes slo-mo lies.” Not an official quote, but you get the gist.
Teams are instructed not to show stump-cam angles to the crowd until a decision is made, precisely to avoid the kind of pantomime we saw from the RCB bench. On this occasion the feed went up promptly and the crowd, split almost evenly between home teal and travelling red, took sides in predictable fashion.
Impact on the match
In cold numbers the dismissal was pivotal. Patidar, coming off scores of 48 and 72, was the in-form batter; losing him in the eighth over forced RCB to recalibrate. They stumbled to 114 for 6 before a late swing from Mahipal Lomror nudged them past 150. Titans’ chase, powered by Shubman Gill, looked comfortable throughout.
“We had enough on the board if we’d bowled in the right areas,” Bhuvneshwar added, refusing to pin defeat solely on the catch. “But yes, moments like that do shift momentum.”
What next?
Expect another quiet tweak to television protocols, maybe a stronger reminder about showing contentious angles after the decision. The law itself is unlikely to change again soon; MCC clarified the wording as recently as 2022. Most players accept the grey zone, even if it stings when the call goes against them.
For umpires, every frame counts, sometimes literally. And for outfielders, the lesson remains timeless: fingers under, palm up, hold the pose for the camera – then find a way to stand that leaves no room for doubt.
