Meaning of safe pair of hands | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The ability to catch and keep hold of (the ball, etc.)
2. A player who has this ability.
   metonymically
3. An experienced person (especially a leader) who can be trusted to do a decent job and not to make serious mistakes; often in relation to a task which is difficult and important; often suggesting blandness or a contrast to someone brilliant but erratic.
   figuratively

Examples

“His fielding in the outfield in the early part of his career impressed me, if anything, more than his batting or bowling, for he was a beautiful thrower. ... He could run like a deer and had a very safe pair of hands.”

“A Safe Pair Of Hands [section title] The stand-off half who hasn't hands like a good fielder in the slips had better change his position, for he is comparatively useless if he cannot take all sorts and conditions of passes, and, in nearly every case, whilst well under way.”

“the veteran shot-stopper has proved to be a safe, capable pair of hands over the years”

“1998 Thody, Philip Malcolm Waller The Fifth French Republic: Presidents, Politics and Personalities (Routledge) p.34 →ISBN The solid, reliable Monsieur Pompidou was there, as safe a pair of hands as the most timorous bourgeois could wish for”

“[…] Sarkozy appointed the no-nonsense Alliot-Marie in November to straighten out the Quai d'Orsay, as the ministry is known, after the shambolic three-year stint there of Bernard Kouchner, the glamorous humanitarian doctor. … She was a safe, uninspiring pair of hands who acquired a name as an enforcer.”

“[Alistair] Darling was considered a safe pair of hands, although I was sceptical […].”

CEFR level