Importance of fielding in cricket

In today's international cricket, it is very important to be a good fielder as much as a good batsmen or bowler. I have been following cricket since I was 6 and since 2015, I have been researching about the analysis and statistics part of it. It's not just a game about talent or skill anymore. Today fitness and fielding are a very integral part of the process.

A batsman scores in some games and some games doesn't, a bowler may take wickets in some games and may not and may concede too many runs and may not in some games. But a good fielder will always save runs, take catches or run batsmen in every game. This is the belief that our ex-captain M.S Dhoni had when he made a bold step taking fielding into consideration and dropping players because of insufficient fitness and slow fielding. Initially, this was not taken seriously. But today everyone knows that this was no doubt the right move. And thanks to this, Indian cricket started seeing this as a basis for selection.

If you score a hundred in a match and drop a catch and that costs your team 75 or 80 runs more, your contribution becomes less effective for your team.You have got to be able to stop the runs and take the catches. Only then you can contribute to the team as 50% of the time the players spend as a fielder in the match. The way I see it, there are 3 ways to contribute to your team as a fielder.

One is by taking catches. This is the most important part of fielding. Taking catches in high pressure situations is very crucial. One big catch of any major batsman can save upto 50-100 runs if he is dismissed early in the match. Fielders like Kieron Pollard take catches which could have been potential sixes and make it look easy. At the moment they realise they will step on the boundary cushion, they throw the ball up and take it on the second attempt after going back and stepping back into the field. Catches like that are now becoming regulatory as the level of competition has increased over the years. Even one handed catches or diving catches dropped are labelled as potentially catchable chances. So catches play an integral role in cricket.

Next is run outs. Now some people think that run outs are a gift for the bowling team which the opposition provides unknowingly. But the truth is, run outs are actually a test of awareness and presence of mind on the field. If a fielder is able to hit the stumps accurately before the batsman reaches the crease, he would not just have taken the wicket but also have prevented the runs which could have been scored. Hitting the stumps from anywhere on the field with speed, precision and strength is not an easy task.

And finally comes stopping the runs. Preventing 4s and 6s, keeping it down just 2 or 1 or reducing 2 o just a single or a dot ball can make all the difference while chasing or defending a total. Those things which Jadeja, Raina, Kohli, De Villiers, etc do the best.

An ideal or perfect fielder is one who can do these three things the best and consistently on a regular basis. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't see this important fact. Saving runs or taking catches are just as important as scoring runs or taking wickets in a match. But the fielding never get the amount of appreciation that they deserve. Even at the end of the matches, the fielding is not acknowledged as much as the batting. But with cricket evolving at a good rate, I'm sure that this will change with time.