Catches win matches? Well, they certainly help set them up. Alex Carey’s brace of afternoon wonder-grabs sent the dangerous duo of Phil Salt and Harry Brook trudging back to the sheds blinking not from the afternoon Lahore sun but in disbelief.
Carey’s acrobatic, sinew straining exertions in the outfield (gloves? who needs ’em) exemplified a razor sharp Australian performance in the field that kept England’s progress constantly in check and eventually paved the way for a historic run chase, the highest ever in International Cricket Council tournaments no less. The Aussies can turn it on in major tournaments, who knew?
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Josh Inglis’s liquid nitrogen-veined maiden ODI century will steal the headlines and rightly so, especially as the first 14 years of his life saw him brought up amongst the crags and chevins of Menston, Yorkshire, before a move out to the sunnier climes and sandy beaches of Mindarie in Perth. The Yorkshire lad turnedWest Australian dude who lumped a whole lotta pressure on the poms? A delicious and sure fire way to get computer keyboards clacking.
Mike Atherton, broadcasting as Inglis secured victory with two and half overs left and finishing unbeaten on 120 off just 86 balls made the first of what will surely be a common spoonerism for commentators as he heaped praise on “Jos English”, the usually laconic and bone-dry Atherton amusing himself and others with the garble before leaning into it further and cheekily asking Steve Smith the question on all English fans lips after such a flawless performance from the 29 -year -old wicketkeeper-batter.
“Has he still got his English passport?!”
“You’ll have to ask him! But he’s not going anywhere.” Smith replied with a Garfield smile creeping across his chops, very much the cat that has got the ex-pat cream. Inglis declared himself “over the moon” with the win and his own electrifying performance, his firmly antipodean accent betraying only the tiniest fragment of flattened vowels that hint at his “eh up” past rather than his “ah look” present.
Inglis’s innings was all the more remarkable due to the way he shrugged in the face of scoreboard pressure and consistently peppered the boundaries all around the ground with lightning fast hands. The dew soaked ball seeming to pick up pace off his blade as it repeatedly traced across the glistening Gaddaffi Stadium turf like a pebble strewn across a glacier.
Inglis also later gave an insight into what it is like to bat with Alex Carey, with whom he shared a defining partnership of 146 runs in twenty tricksy middle overs after Australia were teetering on 136-4 for four. “Alex doesn’t really saying anything when he bats” he revealed when scooping the player of the match award, “So I just cracked on with it and tried not to look at the scoreboard too much.”
The seemingly perennially bashful Carey was extremely content to quietly cruise in Inglis’ batting slipstream and you get the feeling he wouldn’t give a fig that the man who he has relinquished the ODI keeping gloves to will dominate the conversation over the coming days.
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Having the best year of his career in both domestic and international cricket, Carey still has the air of a man who prefers to blend into the background but possesses an inexplicable Forest Gump-ian habit of wandering into the centre of the action. There he is unfurling the underarm throw to run Jonny Bairstow out at Lord’s in 2023, oh and there he is quietly weathering the ensuing shitstorm with bush baby eyed bemusement whilst everything from the spirit of cricket to shoplifted haircuts are flung his way in the aftermath.
There’s Alex Carey, having a nice stroll through Tiananmen Square in June 1989, there he is doing a quick Sudoku on a grassy knoll on a November afternoon in Dallas, 1963. Up he pops in Galle in February 2025, compiling 156 runs to set up a Test series win, there he is in Brisbane 2022, hitting a maiden Test century in the background as David Warner scores 200 and grabs the headlines with his first century in three years in his 100th Test match. Did you spot Alex Carey? Never mind, he won’t.
Carey was memorably caught on camera stumbling into swimming pool on a Test tour of Pakistan three years ago. His captain, Pat Cummins, sharing the video of the slip to much viral mirth. It was only a matter of minutes after Carey had let his Clark Kent mask slip for a second in Lahore to pull off a Superman soar at wide mid-on to dismiss Phil Salt that the still image of him at full stretch with the catch inexplicably pouched had been extracted and transposed over the 2022 Karachi swimming pool footage. It was soon doing the rounds online. Carey probably won’t see it, probably doesn’t even go online at all. Even after a day like that.