When one speaks of slip fielders, you are reminded of legendary names like Mark Waugh, Mark Taylor, Mohammed Azharuddin and lately Ajinkya Rahane. The trick to becoming a good slip fielder is to anticipate, quick reflexes, crouching low and most importantly soft pair of hands.
In world cricket today, Ajinkya Rahane is arguably the very best, he also has the world record when it comes to most number of catches in an innings, a feat he eclipsed against Sri Lanka.
In the recently concluded one-off Test against Bangladesh, Ajinkya Rahane once again gave us a demonstration of why he is considered the very best in modern times.
Ravindra Jadeja was the bowler and Soumya Sarkar was the batsman. The incident happened during Bangladesh’s second innings when they were in a steady situation at 71 for one.
India was denied a wicket for a long time and Virat’s boys were getting restless, that is when Jadeja’s ball that did not spin as much, got a thickish outside edge only to be snuffed up by an alert Rahane. Rahane’s hands were low and soft, he allowed the ball to come towards him rather than going for it.
If young fielders are watching this then this is a perfect example to take a reflex action catch at slips, the trick also is in not panicking. The event happened at the end of the day, when they were looking to bat till stumps without loosing a wicket.
Now things have got even more difficult for Bangladesh because the cracks are going to widen on the last day and the for the Bangladeshi batters it will be a herculean task to draw the Test match.
