‘Anyone else wouldn’t have risked it’: Shreyas Iyer boundary catch despite shoulder injury leaves all amazed

MUMBAI: Like last year, Shreyas Iyer is leaving everyone charmed with his smooth, flawless, and graceful batting in the IPL, apart from his inspirational captaincy while leading Punjab Kings to the top of the table in the league stage of IPL-2025. However, it is the Punjab Kings captain’s stunning fielding effort on the boundary to dismiss Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya at the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday night which has had everyone going ga-ga over him, and left even the greats of the game in awe of his catching ability. Iyer's moment of magic arrived in the 18th over of the match, when Pandya looked to launch Marco Jansen into the stands, and the ball soared over long-on.

Fielding at long off, Iyer sprinted across, judged the trajectory of the ball, leaped backward as he was going beyond the boundary, and tossed the ball back to his teammate Xavier Barlett, even as he lost his balance, all within a split second, to complete a "team catch. " In a moment which has gone viral since then, the 31-year-old Mumbaikar's brilliant effort left Rohit Sharma and India's T20 captain Suryakumar Yadav, who was perhaps reminded of his own brilliant catch to dismiss David Miller in the 2024 T20 World Cup final at Barbados, staring in disbelief while watching it all unfold from the nearby MI dugout. Impressed by Iyer's relay catch, Jonty Rhodes—perhaps the greatest fielder the game has ever seen—reflected on how fielding standards have transformed in modern cricket.

Watching @ShreyasIyer15 perform that acrobatic fielding to assist in taking the “team catch” made me appreciate how fielding has evolved since my retirement. For a long time, I felt like the “father of fielding”, but watching these modern athletes with their timing and awareness on the boundary line makes me feel like the “grandfather of fielding”! Rhodes’ own career was defined by inner-circle brilliance, but he admitted that watching the likes of Kieron Pollard and Glenn Maxwell reshaped his approach as an MI fielding coach and introduced him to the now-familiar art of airborne saves and relay catches on the boundary.

"I spent 99% of my career fielding in the inner circle, and when I started working as a fielding coach, there was no focus on the modern-day “hotspots” on the boundaries. It was only when I started working with @mipaltan and saw Kieron Pollard, and then Glenn Maxwell, performing these incredible “airborne saves” on the boundaries that we started focusing not only on taking catches off balls that were already beyond the rope, but even on saving the ball from going for a six and forcing the batters to run only 1 or 2. With impact players transforming the way batters can continuously attack the bowling, even with the loss of 4-5 wickets, bowlers need to be backed up by their fielders, and Shreyas’ spectacular “catch and release” was a perfect example of that.