IPL: Why relay catches like Axar Patel-to-Shivam Dube no longer carry that surprise factor | Cricket News
4 min readMar 27, 2026 09:42 AM IST The destination of the ICC T20 World Cup would probably have been different had it not been for the faultless execution of a facet of the game that’s almost taken for granted these days. A total of 253 was never meant to be threatened, but a combination of the flat Wankhede Stadium pitch, the small ground and Jacob Bethell announcing his arrival on the big stage, meant that England remained in the hunt in the semifinal despite their top order contributing next to nothing. A requirement of 82 in a little over six overs was a tall task, but the way Bethell and England’s man of the tournament Will Jacks were going in their 77-run stand in just over six overs, Suryakumar Yadav and his troops, as well as the packed Mumbai crowd, couldn’t rest easy. It was then that Axar Patel and the relay catch with Shivam Dube made the decisive intervention. Arshdeep Singh slanted one full and wide of Jacks’s off-stump. The batsman’s slice seemed …
