Asia Cup 2025: Butter-fingered Indian fielders have plenty of 'catching' up to do in the coming days

India’s catching was a horror show, accomplished catchers competing with each other for top (?) honours in a bloopers package that made for embarrassing viewing.

Dubai: At first, it was acceptable, a cricketing error that can happen sometimes. Then, it became comical, segueing into the alarming and eventually the farcical.

India’s catching at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium (DICS) on Wednesday in the Asia Cup tie against Bangladesh was an unmitigated horror show, accomplished catchers competing with each other for top (?) honours in a bloopers package that made for embarrassing viewing.

Five dropped catches in 20 overs doesn’t behove any international side, let alone one that has ruled the T20I landscape with unquestioned authority. What exacerbates the woes against Bangladesh is that it can’t be written as a one-off, as a collective bad day.

After all, India did shell four in the previous outing against Pakistan, also in the Super Four stage.

That they haven’t been punished, yet, for their largesse should not mask the reality that as a catching unit, India have plenty of catching up to do, the terrible pun notwithstanding.

Just the other night, after Hardik Pandya pulled off a screamer to dismiss Oman’s Aamir Kaleem to settle jangling nerves, fielding coach T Dilip waxed eloquent about his wards’ preparation, their commitment, their wholehearted devotion to the seemingly simple but occasionally frustrating art of catching the five-and-a-half-ounce annoying orb.

He was well within his rights. India had been on top of their catching game until that point, highlighted by a string of terrific grabs in the Group A fixture against Pakistan.

Except for the Oman showdown in Abu Dhabi, India’s four other fixtures have been at DICS, which carries the notorious reputation of being one of the most difficult catching grounds in the world. That reputation isn’t without basis; in the IPL in 2020 and 2021, in the T20 World Cup also in 2021, in the T20 Asia Cup the following year and the Champions Trophy this February-March, even the best fielders, the otherworldly Glenn Phillips excepted, have struggled for perception.

Unlike most other grounds worldwide with four, at best six, light towers, the DICS outfield is lit up by a series of low lights from the roofs that stud the circumference of the stadium, hence the sobriquet Ring of Fire. It places unique challenges on fielders, no matter how sure of hand they might be.

It’s easy to lose the ball against the lights and because teams train at the ICC Academy instead of the match venue itself, acclimatisation to the unprecedented demands isn’t on the table. These aren’t excuses, as the players themselves insist. They are contributory factors, but at the highest level, they can’t and must not be allowed to bemuse and befuddle crack fielders to a potentially decisive degree.

What’s surprising is how, and how quickly, India have gone from very good to very bad when the reverse is a more understandable transition. Having adjusted very quickly, they are now finding the going tough, which beggars explanation. Among the culprits are proven experts like Abhishek Sharma, Axar Patel, Shubman Gill, even Sanju Samson with the big gloves on.

There have been suggestions that India have been casual and complacent, that they have taken too much for granted, but those suggestions should be firmly met with the (lack of) seriousness they deserve.

Varun Chakravarthy, of whose bowling four catches have been spilled, was on-point when he remarked, “The floodlights come in the eyeline sometimes, it is a little bit of a disturbance. But you can't give excuses at this level. As a team, we should be taking these catches. We have to get accustomed to it.”

Dilip, it is learnt, was in a charitable mood after the Pakistan misadventure. Surely, after the Bangladesh meltdown, he would have read the riot act?