Why didn't Chris Lynn fall on the boundary rope while taking the AB de Villiers' catch?

Chris Lynn receiving the Man-of-the-Match award vs. RCB

Australian batsman Chris Lynn, representing Kolkata Knight Riders in the ongoing Indian Premier League tournament, has been grabbing the headlines ever since he took the fantastic catch near the boundary line against Royal Challengers Bangalore to dismiss AB de Villiers: one which delivered the Kolkata based franchise an improbable victory.

Playing only his second IPL match, first time in the purple and gold of Knight Riders, Lynn starred with the bat, too, scoring 45 off 31 deliveries to help his team set a competitive target of 151.

While the catch has been subject to media buzz, and rightly so, a question was asked by a user on Quora.com for a technical explanation on how Lynn avoided the fall after looking almost certain to touch the ropes.

“In the video, it is clearly seen that his shadow right below has crossed the rope and his neck should have landed on the rope. But he ends up landing about 7-9 inches inside the rope and was sliding his neck away from the rope. How is this possible? Which force is responsible for his change of trajectory mid-air? Can this be a superhuman trait because generally our muscles don’t get time to contract during a fall and it stays in expanded state (that’s why ligament tear occurs to athletes)? Is Chris Lynn an exception to that or are the cameras lying? Normally inertia is strong and doesn’t allow us to change trajectory mid-flight against the inertia of motion. I am pretty shocked by this catch to say the least!”

Prateek Bhiwapurkar, another user, in reply to the query, has come up with what appears to be the most certain answer to the mystery surrounding the catch, technically analysing all the probabilities and physics behind it.

“Consider Lynn is standing facing the pitch with his back a couple meters away from the boundary. The floodlight towers are somewhere in frontal semicircle rather than back. So Lynn blocks the light, which is coming from the towers at an acute angle and not from overhead. So, shadows hint at nothing, they are deceptive.

Now, let’s explore the mechanics of Lynn’s catch.

Pic 1: He catches the ball. Here the momentum of the ball and Lynn add together (vector addition). The new system (Lynn+ball) has the added momentum towards the boundary and Lynn tends to arch backward, as he had begun to jump.

Pic 2: When Lynn jumped a little backwards, he put his center of mass (typically lower abdomen-buttocks region) in a parabolic trajectory, starting from about 2m from the boundary ending at almost 70-80 cms from it. Now here’s the smartest move. You can see Lynn sees that he might hit the ropes, so he lifts his leg more towards the rope and his upper body away from the rope, because he cannot change the path of the center of mass. So this minor adjustment had to be made.

Pic 3: The stunning catch is complete as Lynn lands safely. Notice how the body has arched around the center of mass.”

One of the most epic catches in the history of cricket!