In a déjà vu situation for Australian captain Mitchell Marsh, he dropped a genuine dolly to give India’s Hardik Pandya a second chance in the critical Super-Eights match at the 2024 T20 World Cup in St Lucia on Monday.
The incident happened on the second ball of the seventeenth over. Leg-spinner Adam Zampa threw it wide, and Hardik Pandya flung his bat at it without moving his feet. The ball left his top-edge and floated to the backward point zone.
Marsh fled from the point but never settled beneath it. He got both hands on the ball, but because he was continually moving, he couldn’t keep his balance, causing the ball to pop out. View the video of the drop here:
Marsh has recently become known for dropping catches. He dismissed Virat Kohli in Australia’s World Cup opener against India in 2023. This was also his fifth drop of the competition, which leads all teams.
A graphic on the program confirmed that Australia has the lowest catching efficiency in the tournament among the Super Eight teams, at 70.6%. The overall outfielding performance in terms of conserving boundaries and preventing doubles was similarly bad for a team known for using its fielding as a powerful weapon to change games.
Hardik Pandya makes Australia pay for Mitchell Marsh’s drop
As in the 2023 World Cup, Hardik Pandya made Mitchell Marsh and Australia pay for the catch. He was batting 5 (7) at the time and finished with 27 (17), including a four and two sixes. That innings built on Rohit Sharma’s 92 (41) and Suryakumar Yadav’s 31 (16), bringing India to 205/5 in the first innings.
