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Opinion
India’s fielding was poor in the first Test, but just how bad was it?
It frustrates me that there is no effective fielding measure in cricket. We count the number of catches, but this doesn’t tell us how difficult a catch was or how many were dropped.
A possible solution is to assign a runs value to each fielding event. If a catch was taken or missed, how difficult was it? How likely would a typical fielder have been to catch it? And, therefore, how many runs were saved or cost? Applying these questions to every potential catch, stumping and run out and every piece of ground fielding results in a fielding score.
I’ll go into more detail below, but the headline results for the first Test are:
| Innings 1 | Innings 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | +29 runs | +22 runs |
| India | -40 runs | +15 runs |
So, all up, Australia finished the match on plus 51 runs, India on minus 25 runs, a difference of 76. This confirms the prevailing opinion that India’s fielders had a shocker.
However, while the overall result comes as no surprise, some of the individual players’ figures contradict the popular perception of how they performed.
Take the wicketkeepers. On the face of it Tim Paine had a better game than Wriddhiman Saha, taking seven catches to Saha’s zero. But this is misleading, as six of Paine’s catches were straightforward and the seventh – his catch to dismiss Hanuma Vihari – was of only moderate difficulty. A competent wicketkeeper would be expected to take them all. Paine put down a difficult chance off Pat Cummins and all told finished with a fielding score of plus one.
Saha missed two difficult chances. He also assisted in a straightforward run out of Mitchell Starc in the first innings and cleverly ran out Matthew Wade in the second innings, and the credits he received for these pushed his overall result to plus 15.
So while Paine deserved player of the match because of his splendid 73 not out, Saha actually out-kept him. Yet in the absence of a fielding measure, it is being reported that Paine kept well and Saha was a bit wobbly.
Tim Paine (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
So how does my method actually work? I’m glad you asked.
There are two components to consider when assigning a runs value to every chance taken or missed: how many runs a wicket is worth and how difficult a chance was.
In the last decade of Test cricket just over 30 runs have been scored for each wicket and so 30 is the number I used. To assess the difficulty of an opportunity I asked, “What percentage of the time would a standard, decent fielder have taken the chance?”. This percentage was then applied to the 30 runs wicket value and a credit or debit arrived at. See below for a worked example.
This is a subjective process but precedents exist in baseball – a much more statistically sophisticated game – where human judgment determines whether a player gets given a hit or a fielder gets an error. And subjectivity could be removed with technology – ball tracking data could be compiled to enable a more definitive assessment of how difficult a chance was.
Ground fielding was more straightforward. If a fielder saved runs when I judged a typical fielder would not have, the fielder received a credit for the amount saved. And if a fielder failed to save runs when a typical fielder would have, the fielder was debited. So a superb chase and dive that turns four into three results in a one-run credit but if a wicketkeeper misses a simple take that leads to four byes, this incurs a four-run debit. Again, it’s subjective, but again, technology could be used to fix this.
As an example of how the method works, take the first-Test performance of Mayank Agarwal, whose name appears three times in the data.
Agarwal failed to haul in a four in Australia’s first innings. I judged a typical Test fielder should have kept it to three, hence Agarwal was debited a run.
Agarwal dropped a straightforward chance off Paine, a chance I deemed would be taken about 80 per cent of the time. This mistake is therefore deemed to cost 80 per cent of the 30 runs assigned to a wicket, so 24 runs are debited from Agarwal’s fielding score. Finally, he took a straightforward chance to dismiss Marnus Labuschagne in the second innings, a catch I assessed would be dropped 20 per cent of the time, so he saved his side 20 per cent of 30 runs, which is six runs.
All up, Agarwal’s contributions were -1 run, -24 runs and +6 runs for a total of -19 runs, a poor fielding game.
If this method were applied consistently match after match (eventually with the assistance of technology), it would be valuable, and not just in Test cricket – at the IPL auction a superior score might mean a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars to a player’s sale price.
The specifics of the methodology can be debated, but eventually a fielding score should be able to sit alongside batting and bowling averages as a fundamental benchmark of performance. The sport would be better for it.
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