Cricket just gave us the impossible catch in sporting history

I’ve watched this catch 100 times and I still can’t get over how impossible it was.

Pakistan’s Abdullah Shafique made a catch that is not only legendary in cricket but might be one of the greatest catches of all time, regardless of the sport. Seriously.

I know it’s not the most blatant thing in the world, but think about everything that’s going on right now. First, Shafique plays at short leg, the closest a fielder can be to a batting position. He has almost no reaction time to the ball coming off the bat.

Second, he’s wrong-footed. Shafique waits for the ball to carry the bat to his left before realizing it is going to his right. So you take the already limited reaction time he has and then multiply the difficulty exponentially.

Then he has to commit, basically blindly hoping he even gets his hands on the ball. He just gets his fingertips on it and still manages to push it in, dive midway and hold on. This is bare handed, and a cricket ball is denser than a baseball.

This is one of those sports moments that seems completely fake. The complexity required for such a catch is unparalleled. What a moment.