Hosts Let Off the Hook by India's Woeful Catching

Harry Brook led a charmed life at Headingley, till he ran out of luck.

- Somshuvra Laha

KOLKATA: There is no greater agony than to be dismissed one run short of a hundred at a ground one has grown up playing cricket.

But it's also true Brook had no business lasting as long as he did. India's woeful catching gave him two lives, at two very curious junctures of the day. Both came behind the wicket, by the wicket-keeper and then gully, positions you are probability-wise more assured of these catches being taken. This, however, was also a strange day where easy catches were dropped and stupendous catches manufactured. But that doesn't lessen the damage by any extent.

At the end of the Test, when every hour's play is expected to be audited and dissected, the dropped catches will hurt most. Because if there was ever a day worse than others to drop catches it was Sunday at Leeds, in the first of a five-match Test series, having got a first-innings total big enough to make England sweat.

Both chances off Brook should have been held, both critically spaced out in the context of England's first-innings chase.