The Catch That Went Too Far

A fielder leaps at the boundary to catch a ball flying for six. His momentum carries him over the rope, so, still airborne, he flicks the ball up, lands outside, springs off the ground again, taps it back towards the field, and hops inside to complete the catch. The batter is out. It looked like a trick, and plenty of people thought it unfair. It was also entirely legal.

That was Michael Neser, fielding for the Brisbane Heat in Australia's Big Bash League in 2022. A ball clearing the boundary rope on the full is worth six runs; one caught before it lands is a wicket. His juggling act turned one into the other — and made cricket rewrite a law.

Why the rope is the whole problem#

A catch counts only if the fielder holds the ball inside the boundary. Touch the ground beyond the rope while holding it and it is a six, not a wicket. But the law watches the ground, not the air: a fielder can be well past the rope in mid-flight and still count as inside, as long as the last place he touched the ground before touching the ball was in the field. That is what lets fielders fly at the rope at all.

The loophole#

Until 2010, a fielder who went outside had to land back inside before touching the ball again. That year the law was relaxed to reward athletic fielding, and it created the relay catch: knock the ball up near the rope for a team-mate, or flick it up, step over the line and dive back to catch it yourself. Fine to watch, and nobody minded.

The gap was that nothing limited how many times you could touch the ball while airborne beyond the rope. So a fielder could catch it outside, throw it up, land outside, jump again and tap it once more — juggling entirely beyond the boundary before coming home. Feet off the ground each time, it stayed legal. The trick earned a name: the bunny hop.

A relay fielder is scrambling to get back into the field; the bunny-hopper stays out and performs. That was the part that grated. The Marylebone Cricket Club, which writes the Laws of Cricket, said such catches "feel unfair" to most of the cricketing public, and that Neser had "quite literally gone too far".

It felt like the fielder had — quite literally — gone too far.

MCC, on the catch that changed the Law

The fix#

The 2026 change is small. A fielder still gets one leap and one touch of the ball beyond the rope — but after that, every time he meets the ground he must be inside the field. Land outside a second time and it is a six. That kills the bunny hop and leaves the honest relay catch untouched.

The neat part is where it landed. Requiring a fielder to ground himself inside before carrying on is very nearly the pre-2010 law: cricket opened the boundary up for fifteen years, watched athleticism stretch it too far, and pulled the line back to almost the same inch. A catch, it decided again, has to be a catch — not a juggling act over the line. The change is already in international cricket and enters the Laws proper on 1 October 2026.