Butter fingers

Bad is not the right word. Fielding-wise, the on-going series, perhaps, has been the worst in the recent times. Drop catches, misfields, mis-hits… are the order of the day. Even Yuvraj Singh cannot escape the blame, writes Taus Rizvi

Fielding is an integral part of cricket but that is not seen in the current India-Pakistan five match one-day international series.

With the number of catches dropped by the fielders of both the countries, it seems that the fielding is being considered secondary to batting and bowling.

One hardly finds any aggression on the field by the players in the series which is supposed to be a “high pressure” one.

The champions and the runner-up who displayed the best of their fielding abilities in the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa are struggling to find a foothold in the 50-over cricket.

Many catches were dropped in the last three games (Guwahati, Mohali and Kanpur) that cost Pakistan the match in the first and the third game, while India in the second.

On Sunday, Salman Butt dropped Yuvraj Singh early on in his innings. The middle order batsman then took the Pakistan bowling to the cleaners and eventually ended up with the match winning innings of 77.

For both sides, fielding is one of the areas of concern on which they require a lot of effort and work, if they want to raise the standard of their game.

One cannot rule out the possibility that both the sides’ are playing with a relaxed mindset which can be one of the reasons for the poor fielding.

Former India coach Anshuman Gaekwad agreed that the intensity level is low in the players right now.

“Basically, poor fielding is due to lack of fitness and one needs to be fit to be a good fielder. Another thing is that the players are not anticipating and even the bowlers are failing to field off their own bowling. The intensity is also not there on the field,” said Gaekwad.

He also pointed out that the players will have to be on their toes if they need to improve their fielding standard.

“The players are looking relaxed on the field and they need to do away with that feeling. I think this is the worst ever fielding seen during an Indo-Pak series.

Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has also raised concerns over his team’s poor fielding and said they need to work very hard on it.

“Fielding does matter a lot. We dropped a few catches today and we know we have to work hard on this aspect,” he told reporters after the third ODI at Kanpur on Sunday.

Pakistan has been worst comparatively as far as fielding concerned in the series, and their skipper Shoaib Malik agrees with it.

“We were hoping to restrict them to 250-odd but Yuvraj played really well. We dropped him early on and that probably proved to be the turning point.

We lacked in the fielding department and we need to work hard on it,” Malik said in the post match press conference in Kanpur.