here’s a feeling on a cricket field that is unlike any other. Players at all levels go misty-eyed and weak at the knees when they try to describe it. If you’ve played the game at some point then maybe you’ve experienced it too? Can you guess? 메이저사이트

The pinched single on 99 to bring up a hard-earned hundred? Nope. The surge of joy upon hearing the ball scud into the stumps? Afraid not. That feeling that courses through hands, wrist and then gut when you connect with a ball so sweetly it soars for six? Nah.

It’s the fraction of a second when a catch is taken and you know you’ve got it but no one else yet does. It’s still only between you and the ball, a secret shared in the liminal space. It’s there only for the merest flicker of time and then it’s gone, lost, punctured by ecstasy and euphoria. Maybe even relief.

Don’t just take my word for it. Paul Collingwood took 96 catches in 68 Tests, including his fair share of cortex-boggling grabs. He will be better placed to describe it. “First you have that moment of seeing the ball and thinking: ‘Am I gonna get there? Am I no …? And then when you feel it actually almost kind of soak into to your hand. It’s just an incredible feeling.”

The line goes quiet for a second and I can tell that I’ve briefly lost the flaxen-haired fielding great to his thoughts. He has floated off down the endless stream of spectacular catches in his mind.

The same thing happens when speaking to the former England wicketkeeper Jack Russell, a career of moments and feelings flood back. “I took a ball down the leg-side one-handed in a cup final against Somerset, that one was … wow. I can feel it now. It sticks out above everything, that.”