Ebadot Hossain’s bouncer brushed the gloves of Ikram Alikhil. Litton Das’s diving catch to his right was one to remember.
It was not just this catch, but Litton’s performance with both bat and with gloves behind the wicket in the Abu Dhabi Test will stay in the minds of spectators for a long time. It will also go down in the record books. With that catch, Litton set a world record.
The catch to dismiss Ikram, taken towards the end of the morning session on the fifth day of the Test today, Tuesday, was Litton’s ninth dismissal as a wicketkeeper in the match. Litton scored 53 in Bangladesh’s first innings and followed it with a 102 in the second.
Litton became the first wicketkeeper in Test history to score 50-plus runs in both innings and record nine dismissals in the same match. The previous record belonged to South Africa’s Denis Lindsay.
In the Johannesburg Test against Australia in 1966, Lindsay scored 50-plus runs in both innings and recorded eight dismissals. By catching Ikram, Litton surpassed Lindsay to set a new record.
The record for the most dismissals by a wicketkeeper in a single Test match is now within Litton’s reach.
England’s Jack Russell, South Africa’s AB de Villiers and India’s Rishabh Pant currently share the record, with 11 dismissals each in a match. Litton needs two more dismissals to equal their record and three to break it.
Former England wicketkeeper Russell recorded 11 dismissals against South Africa in a Test in Johannesburg in 1995.
Eighteen years later, at the same venue, South African legend de Villiers equalled Russell’s record in a Test against Pakistan. Pant joined them by recording 11 dismissals against Australia in the Adelaide Test in 2018.
Wicketkeepers have recorded nine dismissals in a single Test match 31 times, including today. There have been five instances of 10 dismissals.
As of yesterday, Litton had already set the Bangladesh record for the most dismissals by a wicketkeeper in a single Test, with eight. The previous record belonged to Khaled Mashud, who recorded seven dismissals against Zimbabwe in 2004.