Who needs a drink? Well quite. I’m off to try to make sense of the most bonkers day yet in a series already full of them. Jim Wallace will be here in the morning; please join him. Thanks for all your emails, goodnight!
Updated
Here’s the relevant law
33.3 Making a catch The act of making a catch shall start from the time when the ball first comes into contact with a fielder’s person and shall end when a fielder obtains complete control over both the ball and his own movement.
In that context, it’s a fair decision from the third umpire Marais Erasmus. As a few of you (and my colleague Simon Burnton) have pointed out, Green (v India) and Smith (Root in the first innings) seemed to have their fingers under the ball in a way Starc didn’t. But both Andrew Strauss and Ricky Ponting think it was a fair catch. When did absolutely everything get so complicated?
