Fielding matters. Team England, please take note.
Basics again: the disposition of forces! Eleven players to a team. The bowler bowls. There’s a wicketkeeper to stop the ball if the batsman misses and it evades the stumps. That leaves nine others people distributed around the cricket field as the captain and bowler think fit, either to catch or run the batsman out, or to stop the scoring of runs.
There’ve always been great fielders. In the nineteen sixties there was the legendary Zimbabwean (Rhodesian!) Colin Bland who could throw down the stumps from any distance or angle. He was a star back then, but these days there are many more like him. The further you go back in the history of the game, the more probable it is that a team carried fielding passengers who regarded this aspect of the game as a chore. And in many amateur teams, this would still be true. In today’s professional game however, you probably won’t play unless you pull your fielding weight. The very talented but under-confident England bowler Monty Panesar is widely mocked for his lack of fielding ability, and his international opportunities may in future be limited unless he can show a significant improvement.
That there’s been a change in attitude and skill is a lot to do with baseball, where a much greater athleticism has been observed. So now in cricket too we see the sliding stop and all in one throw – and very exciting it is too. And the throwing itself is much more accurate and subtle in its variations. And average speed of travel over the ground is much greater.
I remember with dreadful clarity the first occasion I was truly terrified as a fielder. I was at college, and we were playing one of the itinerant midweek teams made up of ex-pros and self-made men, who could afford to take time off to indulge their cricketing passions. Such teams tended to have names like ‘The Nitwits’ or ‘The Bunnies Club’: I can’t recall the moniker for this one. A man called Richard Jefferson strode to the wicket, tall, tanned, hardened of body. He’d played for Surrey for some years, where he would probably have been described in their promotional literature as a ‘hard-hitting batsman and fast bowler’. Yes, well, that was one way of putting it. As the first straight drive exploded off his Gunn and Moore bat like a shell and crashed into the white sightscreen behind the bowler, causing a shower of splinters to decorate the surrounding grass, I started genuinely to pray the ball wouldn’t come so close to me that that my inevitable acts of avoidance would have me accused of cowardice. I’d never seen such timing and power on the cricket field. Fortunately after half an hour of violence and mayhem, Jefferson R.I. retired to the pavilion, forty or so runs to the better. He later bowled me middle stump with what was undoubtedly his slower ball, but which was still substantially too quick for me. I was just grateful to get out of the match alive and undamaged.
There are different sorts of terrors on the fielding front. Fielding at mid-off or mid-on, the positions to either side of the bowler and maybe thirty yards from the batsman, the ball is more likely to be drilled in your direction from a straight swing of the bat. There are fewer complications about this, but the ball’s sheer velocity may be greater than elsewhere. The best ground fielders often find themselves placed in ‘the covers’ – square of the wicket on the off-side. They too may have to cope with velocity, but also with confusing spin imparted by a scything action of the bat, and with bounce if the ball is hit hard into the ground. Fielders like the now retired South African Jonty Rhodes, or England’s Paul Collingwood are a delight to watch in this position, taking off like a soccer goalkeeper to save balls seemingly certain to reach the boundary. Further round on the edge of the playing area and nearly behind the wicketkeeper is a position called third-man. There the direction of the ball’s travel is sometimes difficult to work out, and you can easily be made to look silly moving one way when the ball is going another. Miscued strokes to the leg-side can confuse too – the ball may spin one way when hitting the ground the first time, only to break the other way on the second bounce.
Spectators love nothing better than a fielder in confusion. Back in the nineteen seventies a lovely and highly renowned Indian Sikh bowler named Bishan Bedi came to play for Northamptonshire. His coloured patkas were in that era an unusual sight, although beards were ‘in’ amongst even white English players. At the time he was one of the world’s greatest bowlers but by no means the greatest fielder. From successive balls the ball was spanked to near where he stood at deep square leg, and twice it eluded him by going between his legs and over the boundary rope. The crowd hooted in derision, and Bishan Bedi gave a gracious bow while his exasperated captain clasped his hands to his head.
For most law-abiding citizens there’s not much in life to compare with the humiliation of committing a fielding howler, and it takes a lot of grace and self-confidence to properly acknowledge one’s fault to long-suffering team-mates. At very amateur levels a pocket deep enough to buy a full round of drinks after the game can suffice. I’m only guessing, but probably this doesn’t work if you’re playing for England. I wonder what Stuart Broad was feeling like last night…
* The long barrier: Every young cricketer is (or at least, used to be) taught that the best way to prevent fielding embarrassment is as follows. When the ball is hit towards you, kneel with one leg extended in front of you so that you present as big a defence towards the ball as possible. I recall that in ‘back country’ situations where one is likely to encounter large wild animals, similarly misguided advice is sometimes proffered i.e. ‘make yourself look as big as possible’. Of course, a cricket ball won’t eat you, but it will, if the ground is uneven, bounce in such a way as to re-arrange your facial features substantially, if you’ve adopted the long barrier approach. I imagine most cricketers have had an experience of this sort. These days the need to ‘get rid of the ball’ as quickly as possible, means that this doctrinaire approach to fielding is used more sparingly.
Basics again: the disposition of forces! Eleven players to a team. The bowler bowls. There’s a wicketkeeper to stop the ball if the batsman misses and it evades the stumps. That leaves nine others people distributed around the cricket field as the captain and bowler think fit, either to catch or run the batsman out, or to stop the scoring of runs.
There’ve always been great fielders. In the nineteen sixties there was the legendary Zimbabwean (Rhodesian!) Colin Bland who could throw down the stumps from any distance or angle. He was a star back then, but these days there are many more like him. The further you go back in the history of the game, the more probable it is that a team carried fielding passengers who regarded this aspect of the game as a chore. And in many amateur teams, this would still be true. In today’s professional game however, you probably won’t play unless you pull your fielding weight. The very talented but under-confident England bowler Monty Panesar is widely mocked for his lack of fielding ability, and his international opportunities may in future be limited unless he can show a significant improvement.
That there’s been a change in attitude and skill is a lot to do with baseball, where a much greater athleticism has been observed. So now in cricket too we see the sliding stop and all in one throw – and very exciting it is too. And the throwing itself is much more accurate and subtle in its variations. And average speed of travel over the ground is much greater.
I remember with dreadful clarity the first occasion I was truly terrified as a fielder. I was at college, and we were playing one of the itinerant midweek teams made up of ex-pros and self-made men, who could afford to take time off to indulge their cricketing passions. Such teams tended to have names like ‘The Nitwits’ or ‘The Bunnies Club’: I can’t recall the moniker for this one. A man called Richard Jefferson strode to the wicket, tall, tanned, hardened of body. He’d played for Surrey for some years, where he would probably have been described in their promotional literature as a ‘hard-hitting batsman and fast bowler’. Yes, well, that was one way of putting it. As the first straight drive exploded off his Gunn and Moore bat like a shell and crashed into the white sightscreen behind the bowler, causing a shower of splinters to decorate the surrounding grass, I started genuinely to pray the ball wouldn’t come so close to me that that my inevitable acts of avoidance would have me accused of cowardice. I’d never seen such timing and power on the cricket field. Fortunately after half an hour of violence and mayhem, Jefferson R.I. retired to the pavilion, forty or so runs to the better. He later bowled me middle stump with what was undoubtedly his slower ball, but which was still substantially too quick for me. I was just grateful to get out of the match alive and undamaged.
There are different sorts of terrors on the fielding front. Fielding at mid-off or mid-on, the positions to either side of the bowler and maybe thirty yards from the batsman, the ball is more likely to be drilled in your direction from a straight swing of the bat. There are fewer complications about this, but the ball’s sheer velocity may be greater than elsewhere. The best ground fielders often find themselves placed in ‘the covers’ – square of the wicket on the off-side. They too may have to cope with velocity, but also with confusing spin imparted by a scything action of the bat, and with bounce if the ball is hit hard into the ground. Fielders like the now retired South African Jonty Rhodes, or England’s Paul Collingwood are a delight to watch in this position, taking off like a soccer goalkeeper to save balls seemingly certain to reach the boundary. Further round on the edge of the playing area and nearly behind the wicketkeeper is a position called third-man. There the direction of the ball’s travel is sometimes difficult to work out, and you can easily be made to look silly moving one way when the ball is going another. Miscued strokes to the leg-side can confuse too – the ball may spin one way when hitting the ground the first time, only to break the other way on the second bounce.
Spectators love nothing better than a fielder in confusion. Back in the nineteen seventies a lovely and highly renowned Indian Sikh bowler named Bishan Bedi came to play for Northamptonshire. His coloured patkas were in that era an unusual sight, although beards were ‘in’ amongst even white English players. At the time he was one of the world’s greatest bowlers but by no means the greatest fielder. From successive balls the ball was spanked to near where he stood at deep square leg, and twice it eluded him by going between his legs and over the boundary rope. The crowd hooted in derision, and Bishan Bedi gave a gracious bow while his exasperated captain clasped his hands to his head.
For most law-abiding citizens there’s not much in life to compare with the humiliation of committing a fielding howler, and it takes a lot of grace and self-confidence to properly acknowledge one’s fault to long-suffering team-mates. At very amateur levels a pocket deep enough to buy a full round of drinks after the game can suffice. I’m only guessing, but probably this doesn’t work if you’re playing for England. I wonder what Stuart Broad was feeling like last night…
* The long barrier: Every young cricketer is (or at least, used to be) taught that the best way to prevent fielding embarrassment is as follows. When the ball is hit towards you, kneel with one leg extended in front of you so that you present as big a defence towards the ball as possible. I recall that in ‘back country’ situations where one is likely to encounter large wild animals, similarly misguided advice is sometimes proffered i.e. ‘make yourself look as big as possible’. Of course, a cricket ball won’t eat you, but it will, if the ground is uneven, bounce in such a way as to re-arrange your facial features substantially, if you’ve adopted the long barrier approach. I imagine most cricketers have had an experience of this sort. These days the need to ‘get rid of the ball’ as quickly as possible, means that this doctrinaire approach to fielding is used more sparingly.
