Stunning acrobatics from Glenn Maxwell and Andrew Strauss may be among the most memorable pieces of fielding but the manner of a Brian Close catch at The Oval in 1966 tops them bothIs it possible for a catch to be at one and the same time both the simplest and arguably the greatest ever taken? How achieve we judge such things? For sheer reflex and athleticism,not to mention the impact it had on a match and a series, I have never seen better than Andrew Strausss astonishing diving claw of a one-hander to dismiss Adam Gilchrist at Trent Bridge during the pivotal match in a momentous Ashes series of 2005. On the other side of the coin, and thanks to the advent of Twenty20 cricket in specific,comes the plethora (excess, overabundance) of gymnastic boundary catches that we now see, that of Glenn Maxwell in the one-day international at Old Trafford – a triumph of skill, or awareness,invention and athleticism – the most recent of them.
These boundary riders, key now in white ball cricket, and are a world absent from a game where the time spent practising taking tall catches was almost in inverse proportion to the number that would actually arrive during the course of a season,never mind a single match. Either way, Strauss or Maxwell, and these are magical displays.
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Source: theguardian.com