"I was hoping for a catch to put £1,000 towards a hotel in Morocco"

There have been three winners so far in 2024 to the Kia Catch competition at the Kia Oval on T20 Blast matchdays

You wouldn't believe it without the accompanying evidence, so it was just as well that Julian Fox had his family WhatsApp group to hand as he described the remarkable circumstances leading up to the catch that won him £1,000.

He had just arrived to watch Surrey take on Gloucestershire with his daughter, sending a photograph of their seat to his wife back home, along with a link to a hotel in Morocco that he quite liked the look of; they had been after a destination for a July getaway.

"I messaged my wife and said, 'Have a look at this hotel in Morocco,'" he recalls. "I took a photo of where we were sat and just said, 'Hoping for a catch to put £1,000 towards it!' That was at 6.30pm. Literally, within 15 minutes, it had happened. I didn't even stand up, I just took it sitting down. It came straight to me. My daughter then phoned my wife, who thought we were joking."

The conversation checks out, all there to see on the Fox family group chat.

"My son used to play for the county age-group team in Tom Lawes' year," he added. "He used to get a couple of free tickets each year."

He isn't alone in having a story of coincidence to tell: Tom Hotchkiss had just finished explaining the concept of the Kia Catch to an unaware couple next to him when a six late in Sussex's innings flew towards him.

"I had just told them next that, if you catch it, you win a grand," he laughs. "I don't think they believed me, I think they thought I was crazy. But 30 seconds later, the ball flew in my direction, and I managed to catch it, which was a bit of an outer-body experience."

^{Surrey have qualified for the knockout stages of the T20 Blast (Ben Hoskins/Getty Images)}

Since then, he's been nicknamed Golden Hands among his friends, "so I have to live up to that title".

For the sake of further irony, he's putting the money from the Kia Catch towards a Kia Sportage.

"It was just a crazy experience," he says. "My sister got married the weekend before, but that was 10 times better, which I think landed me in a bit of trouble for saying!"

Daniel Cousins perhaps had the most unusual moment of the trio: his friends had disappeared to find burgers and a beer, leaving him nominally to look after their bags.

When they came back, asking "if they'd missed much" towards the back-end of Sussex's 213 for 7, the answer was a sheepish "yeah".

"The catch came in, and I took it without them being there," he says.

"I used to play a lot but not for a few years; I was always catching it. No temptation to lean out of the way; once it was coming my way, you just don't want to fumble it.

"I have to say, I lost interest in the game after that. I've been to the Kia Oval about three times each season for the last few years, so I knew the £1,000 was a thing. But for it to actually happen, you're so happy to have caught it in the moment that you somehow forget about the money briefly."

All three returned for the washout between Surrey and Middlesex as guests of Kia, who have been involved in the English game now for well over a decade.

"Since 2010, we've had the partnership here," said Simon Hetherington, Kia's commercial director. "We've tried to be more than a ground sponsor or a shirt sponsor, so things like the Kia Catch give something back."

To know more about Kia, visit www.kia.co.uk

Related Topics

• The Kia Young Journalist competition - VOTE NOW!