Fielding in the IPL

In the 2010 edition of the IPL, David Hussey stunned one and all with a remarkable effort at the boundary to pull off a catch offered by Paul Collingwood. After catching the ball, he was about to slip over the boundary when he threw the ball in the air back into the field and then jumped back into the field of play to take the catch. A few days later, in the Delhi-Bangalore match AB de Villiers jumped way high into the air to intercept a catch from Praveen Kumar, thus reminding hardcore cricket fans of Jonty Rhodes. As if this was not enough, Doug Bollinger won the hearts of the Super Kings fans in his very first IPL game by pulling off a difficult catch offered by Yusuf Pathan.

In the same season, the Kings XI were in woeful form. In their match against RCB, Robin Uthappa offered a simple straightforward chance to Sreesanth at long-on. Taking the catch did not need throwing the ball into the air before going out of the boundary and coming back inside in time to catch it. All it required was keeping your eyes on the ball. Sreesanth spilled the simple catch and Uthappa went on to make merry, capitalising on the good fortune like how he did in the game against Chennai at Bangalore when the victim was Ashwin. In the same KXP-RCB match, Piyush Chawla spilled one near the boundary to take the opposition closer to victory.

In yesterday’s match between Delhi and Punjab, Naman Ojha dropped what would have been the wicket of Dinesh Karthik for Varun Aaron. A few balls later, Ojha misfielded one that the batsman left alone. These instances highlight the commitment towards fielding by foreign players and blatantly exposes the lack of effort exerted by young Indian players. One swallow does not make a summer but one bad incident is enough to tarnish a long-built reputation.

A player taking part in the IPL does so to increase his chances of getting selected for the national side to play as either a batsman or a bowler. No player gets selected if he is an excellent fielder but a bad batsman or a bowler. Fielding is expected to be ingrained into the work ethic of a cricketer by default.

This is not to say that Indian fielders are bad. Suresh Raina‘s athleticism on the field has been his strength ever since he debuted in 2005. In the DD-KXP game last night, Shahbaz Nadeem dived well to push the ball back into the field while going over the rope. The standards need to be upped. After all, catches win matches, don’t they ?