IPL 2026: Dropped catches, dip in catching efficiency – fielding issues raise huge alarms
New Delhi, May 16 (IANS) On the eve of taking on Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, the social media accounts of Rajasthan Royals (RR) posted an interesting 20-second clip of its fielders taking catches at practice with both hands and Ravi Bishnoi completing a grab with his right hand.
More than the video, the caption caught the eye, as it said ‘Don’t drop your catches,’ along with laughter and folded hand emojis attached. If one were living under a rock, then that line would have been seen as another attempt by RR’s social media admins to generate quirky laughter.
But if one digs deeper, then that caption also points towards a trend which has been a nagging concern – of dropped catches and a dip in catching efficiency, raising huge alarms in the ten-team competition. The cricketers in 2026 are faster, fitter, and more athletic than any generation before them. The way they dive, slide, and leap to complete acrobatic catches would have seemed extraordinary even a decade ago.
IPL 2026 is shaping up as the most telling reminder yet that athleticism and catching proficiency are two very different things. The data from CricViz tells the story in cold, unforgiving numbers. After 59 matches in IPL 2026, fielding sides have held 541 catches and dropped 153 – a catching efficiency of 77.9 per cent.
Six of the 10 franchises are operating below the 80 per cent threshold. The scale of the problem is not lost on the game’s insiders, and its consequences in a format where 200-plus totals are now routine, and the Impact Sub rule has tilted the balance further toward batters have been severe.
No team better illustrates the crisis than the Delhi Capitals. With a catching efficiency of just 65.4 per cent – the worst in the competition – DC have squandered 19 out of 36 chances. Think of how many times Director of Cricket Venugopal Rao was left ruing about dropped catches costing them crucial runs after losing matches.
Sunrisers Hyderabad have dropped 24 catches – the most by any side this season – but their catching efficiency percentage is slightly better at 72.7 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, Kolkata Knight Riders lead the standings by holding 56 catches and dropping just eight chances at a healthy 87.5 per cent in ten matches and have conceded only one difficult drop all season.
Rajasthan Royals (83.8 percent), Lucknow Super Giants (82.5 percent), Gujarat Titans (82 percent), and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (81.6 percent) have also shown what a cohesive fielding unit can achieve. Punjab Kings, with a catching efficiency percentage of 73.5, have encapsulated the paradox of the modern fielding unit – captain Shreyas Iyer produced one of the catches of the tournament – a breathtaking mid-air relay against the Mumbai Indians to dismiss Hardik Pandya.
Holding his balance in flight, Iyer tossed the ball back to teammate Xavier Bartlett before crossing the boundary rope. It was the kind of moment that makes highlight reels for years. Yet Iyer’s brilliance has not been reflected in the unit around him – his teammate Shashank Singh has had a tournament to forget in fielding by dropping six catches, including spilling three chances in a single innings against Lucknow Super Giants.
As per CricViz data since 2020, overall catches have grown significantly from 459 in 2020 to a peak of 645 in 2024, suggesting that high-scoring matches have occurred in the tournament. The catching percentage peaked in 2023 at 81.5 percent, but has declined since then, to 75 percent in 2025 and 77.9 percent so far in 2026.
Drops have risen sharply – from 129 in 2020 to hitting a peak of 207 in 2025, and with 153 dropped catches in 59 matches, IPL 2026 is on pace to reach a similarly high metric. Raw drop counts tell only part of the story. Cricket-21’s runs-saved and runs-missed metrics put a harder number on the damage, and the figures are sobering.
Naman Dhir’s eight drops have not merely handed batters second lives, but cost Mumbai Indians 27 runs – the highest by any individual fielder in IPL 2026. Shashank’s struggles in fielding acquire an even grimmer dimension through this lens: his dropped catches have cost Punjab Kings an estimated 22 runs in the field this season.
What also makes for a grim reading is that not a single one of Shashank’s six drops are classified as a difficult chance. According to Cricket-21 data, all of them were classified as easy or medium, as Shashank’s catch efficiency stands at a near-indefensible 14.3 per cent.
SRH have leaked 128 runs through fielding lapses this season – the worst figure of any franchise – while saving only 57. That net deficit of 71 runs is not an abstraction – in a format where margins between winning and losing a game can be as thin as 10 or 15 runs, it is the difference between finishing at the top spot and ending up at number four.
Chennai Super Kings compound the picture further with 16 missed run-out opportunities, the most for any side. LSG, despite being at the bottom of the points table, emerges as the standout team when runs saved are the currency. Their fielders have saved 133 runs this season, the most for any franchise.
In terms of individual catching, by combining all keepers and fielders, Jos Buttler leads outright with 17 catches. Jitesh Sharma stands out for efficiency – 12 catches and a stellar percentage of 92.3. Rishabh Pant has saved 26 runs, which makes him the most valuable fielder on either side this season, while Nicholas Pooran, Anukul Roy, Pathum Nissanka, Dhruv Jurel, and Noor Ahmad have saved 17 runs.
Those inside the system are not surprised to see fielding and catching being an issue in IPL 2026. A senior fielding coach, who has worked at the highest level, spoke to IANS on the condition of anonymity on the roots of the malaise in catching and fielding.
“There are many reasons behind it: number one, hard hands. Number two, they don’t get under the ball. Instead, they try to reach out to the ball. Number three, they want to make it a little glamorous. I haven’t seen someone running, nicely pausing, and taking a catch.
“Instead, someone has run and made a slide and taken the catch. But what I can see is, the easy catch, they make it look difficult and glamorous, and that’s maybe one reason why so many dropped catches are happening on the field,” said the fielding coach.
The coach did not spare the culture around practice. “Whatever is there has to be caught; it’s simple. One doesn’t have to think too much. It should be treated like a routine – waking up in the morning, taking a bath, and having breakfast. It should be deeply embedded in the routine of all players so that those chances aren’t missed.”
Another fielding coach, a regular in the cricketing circuit, told IANS that pressure and constant travel are also leading to catches being dropped regularly. “Everyone’s talking about dropped catches, and rightly so, as fielding decides the outcome of games. But sometimes we forget that constant travel and the high pressure of playing matches are always around.
“It needs to be seen if players are getting enough sleep, and whether they are fresh mentally and physically for giving it their all on match day? As per my view, most catches are going down on the square boundaries. Are those exact-match scenarios being replicated in practice by coaches? Also, are your best fielders in the hot zones on match days? We also saw that new LED lights were installed in Jaipur, which took some time for RR fielders to adjust.”
The ones who suffer most acutely are the bowlers. In a tournament where 200-plus targets are now routine, even the best-planned spells can be unravelled in moments if fielding isn’t supportive of their efforts. A dropped catch does not merely cost a wicket – it can extend a partnership by 30 or 40 runs and flip the game on its head within two overs.
The athleticism is not in doubt, as the IPL has always showcased that. The question heading into the business end of the season is a simpler and older one: when the ball comes to you, do you hold it? Right now, for far too many players and teams in IPL 2026, the answer is no. One can just hope that teams like RR will hope that the efforts done in practice and showcased on social media are executed on the field to arrest the great fielding and catching slide.
–IANS
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