The Spin | When hands fail and history alters: cricket’s notorious dropped catches

England’s most renowned butterfingered culprits share the lingering regret that came from a single moment

We all know what it is like to drop a catch. Remember when your colleague tossed you that Pink Lady over your desk, about eight years ago now. To the day. It was such a dolly! You malfunctioned didn’t you? Let yourself down, the apple fell on to your keyboard with an embarrassing clatter. Qwerty? Droppy more like. What about that time you fumbled the car keys off that simple over-bonnet-toss and there was a small but quite significant part of you inside that died for ever as you scrambled among the filth on the pavement. That is where you belong now, Droppy, among the dirt and grime, on the floor alongside your spilt opportunity.

The cricket writer and author Jon Hotten has come up with best description I’ve found for that truly awful feeling of dropping a catch in cricket (or indeed otherwise): “A hollowing out of the spirit.” “It’s not like failure with the bat or the ball, which is more personal,” Hotten writes, “It’s a failure that directly and immediately affects the bowler and the captain … It weakens you psychically, sometimes physically.”

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