Durham's Paul Coughlin managed to grab the spotlight amid the T20 World Cup 2024 playing in the English T20 Blast with a stunner of a catch. The pacer took the catch off his own bowling to dismiss Lancashire's Matthew Hurst in Durham's two-run win.

Hurst had nailed a full-blooded drive back towards Coughlin, who raised his hand to his face as evasive action in his follow-through. However, the ball stuck into the hand and Coughlin held on to it as he lost balance and fell down. Hurst was on 32 off 17 and was setting up a good partnership with captain Keaton Jennings when the wicket fell. The match itself was a run feast with Durham scoring 218/3 in 20 overs. Lancashire ended up getting with two runs of the target, with their innings ending on 216/8.

Among the many impressed online was England Test captain Ben Stokes. “What the heck…joke that,” he said on his X account reacting to the video of the catch tweeted out by Durham. Stokes had opted out of the ongoing T20 World Cup, in which England have gone through to the second round, in order to complete his recovery from a knee surgery. The all-rounder had been crucial to England's victory in the 2022 T20 World Cup, leading them to victory with an unbeaten 52 off 49 balls against Pakistan in Melbourne.

Stokes back to bowling full-time in red-ball cricket

He played a County Championship game for Durham in which he succesfully made a comeback to bowling full-time in red ball cricket. While he fell for a six-ball duck, Stokes took four wickets in each innings, bowling 15.1 overs in the first and 10 in the second.

Stokes had hardly bowled during England's five-match Test series in India, which has been his last international assignment. Stokes bowled five overs in the last Test, which was all he could contribute with the ball as he continued to recover from the surgery over the course of the series.

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