3 minute read
Look, we’re not an entomologist and grainy, low quality social media footage isn’t helping us here. All we know is a flapping insect tried to run Zak Crawley out, only for Sajid Khan to get to the stumps first, where he made a right royal hash of things.
You think we’re kidding, but we are not kidding. The images below aren’t the clearest when viewed as stills, but you can clearly see the blighter fluttering about in the footage.
What happened was: Ben Duckett gently paffed Sajid Khan into the leg side, Zak Crawley ran halfway to the other end and then noticed Duckett was saying no. At this point he whirled around and headed back to the non-striker’s end, along with the ball and also, less predictably, a butterfly.
On the replay, the butterfly enters the frame from the left.
At this point, Sajid hasn’t ballsed anything up.
The butterfly then makes what we’re unfortunately going to refer to as a ‘beeline’ towards the top of off stump.
We can’t know this for certain, but we believe that the butterfly (which is clearly Pakistani because it is in Pakistan) immediately sensed that Sajid was not to be trusted to secure an easy run-out and therefore set out to intervene.
However, in this next shot, we can see that it sadly arrived too late and therefore failed in its mission.
At this point, none of batter, ball or butterfly have arrived and yet hapless Sajid has already broken the stumps.
We then see how the zinging of the second bail compels the butterfly to take evasive manoeuvres.
Disgusted with the standard of Sajid’s fielding, the butterfly then charts a new course away from the stumps.
Sajid, meanwhile, celebrates – seemingly unaware of a modern phenomenon known as “the TV replay” which will clearly and repeatedly display his incompetence in very slow motion.
While the butterfly may have felt deflated at being unable to prevent this catastrophe, it can perhaps comfort itself that it did have a positive impact for Pakistan.
Sajid’s encounter with it apparently inspired him to undertake a metamorphosis of his own: not too long after this moment, he emerged from the cocoon of fielding incompetence as a player capable of dismissing England’s entire middle order.
