England skipper Ben Stokes was caught in an embarrassing blunder after he lost sight of a skied shot from Shubman Gill which should have been a regulation catch at mid-on.
India were 2-132 in reply to England’s first innings of 246 on day two of the first Test, with Shubman Gill (16) and KL Rahula (6) at the crease.
On the last ball of the 28th over Gill danced down the pitch and skied one off the bowling of Joe Root, which should have gone down Stokes’ throat at mid-on.
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“Now Shubman Gill goes down (the wicket) and nobody knows where the ball is,” Harsha Bhogle said.
“Ben Stokes was down at mid-on and he said, can someone find me the ball?”
Former England batter Kevin Pietersen believes Stokes should have made a regulation catch, but completely lost sight of the ball.
“Stokes should have caught this,” Pietersen said.
“If Stokes had seen the ball he would have caught it.
“He was hovering and he didn’t know where the ball was. It went straight up in the air and it landed 20 or 30 feet short of the boundary.
“Stokes was only 20 feet away from the ball, so if he picked it up he would have caught it.”
Bhogle questioned if Stokes was guilty of day dreaming and not following the ball off the batter’s bat.
“There is Stokes and it was too late by then,” Bhogle said.
“Is that a common occurrence? That the ball has gone straight up in the air and the fielders don’t know where it is?
“You would imagine that he is following the trajectory of the ball from the time it is hit.”
Pietersen believes Stokes lost the ball in the sun, but embarrassingly he had his sunglasses on the back of his hat, which drew a quick response from Bhogle.
“I don’t think you see that very often,” Pietersen said.
“Sometimes you see a guy on the boundary where he hesitates and then he picks it up.
“I don’t think I have seen that. It is not very often you see a guy who has absolutely no idea where it is, especially a guy like Ben Stokes.
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“Even once the ball has landed he doesn’t know where it was, so he completely lost where that ball was.
“I wonder if he just looked straight into the sun there and he just lost it.”
“What was surprising was he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses,” a third commentator noted.
“Looking into the sky that gives you a better opportunity. The fact that he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses probably was a factor.”
“You can’t sight the ball too well if your glasses are pointing backwards can you?” Bhogle laughed.
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