The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the guardian of cricket’s laws, has announced a major change to how boundary catches are judged, putting an end to some of the most dramatic, airborne efforts seen in recent years.
This change comes in response to widely debated moments like Michael Neser’s BBL catch in 2023, where he jumped from inside the boundary, tossed the ball in the air, landed outside the rope, jumped again mid-air to tap the ball back in, and then returned inside the field to complete the catch. Though legal at the time, many, including the dismissed Jordan Silk, felt it went against the spirit of the game.
Such stunning catches over the boundary line were quickly becoming the norm as fielders used their athletic prowess to keep juggling the ball as long as their feet did not touch the ground.
Under the new MCC law, such a sequence for boundary catches will no longer be allowed. A fielder can now only touch the ball once while airborne outside the boundary. After that, they must come back inside the field of play to either complete the catch themselves or pass it to a teammate. If the fielder touches the ball more than once while outside or doesn’t land back inside the field, it will now count as a boundary.
This means Neser’s catch and similar efforts like Matt Renshaw’s assist to Tom Banton in BBL 2020 will be ruled illegal once the new rule takes effect.
The change is being made in two stages: The ICC will update its playing conditions immediately, starting with the Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh Test on June 17, before the MCC formally introduces the new law in its next revision in October 2026.
The MCC explained that while these types of catches were technically within the rules, they “felt unfair to most of the cricketing public.” The aim of the update is to strike a balance—keeping spectacular fielding alive but eliminating multi-touch relay catches performed completely outside the field.
How this rule impacts the fielding side remains to be seen, but you won’t find too many batters complaining about it.