Moving Forward: Improving Fielding Standards across Pakistan’s Domestic Cricket Structure

[Thunderbolt14]

In addition to the creation of a fielding points system which tracks the team as a whole, which the PCB is currently working on, I believe there is scope for some easy but effective solutions to quickly jumpstart fielding at the domestic level.

We have already seen fielding become more competitive over the course of the tournament, as teams like Sindh and KPK have realized that exceptional fielding is one of the core reasons for Northern being so far ahead of the pack, and have thus followed suit. There is a notably different energy now visible that was not there earlier in the tournament.

We also see that older players are gradually being phased out, especially the less-than-fit ones, and are slowly replaced with performing youngsters from the second XI. What this effectively means is that the PCB has created a self-correcting system which will grow in quality and standard over time.

What is important now is to create further catalysts and incentives to push fielding farther. The easiest of these options is allocating a Rs 5,000 per match award for the fielder of the match. This costs an extremely nominal amount of Rs 120,000 over the course of 24 matches in the tournament. If extended to List A and First Class, the total comes out to be something like Rs 3 lac per season.

A mechanism like this will allow good domestic fielders like Shadab Khan to earn increased sums of money, and onlooking teammates will find motivation to put in their best efforts every match to dive around, take catches, stop boundaries, and effect run outs.

Moving up in the cost-structure, a more expensive option will be the hiring of trained fitness coaches at every region (who will work with the 6 regional High Performance Centers moving forward). Though this has the potential to be expensive, there is a lot of room for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking on behalf of the Pakistan Cricket Board.

One solution is to actually pay no money to fitness coaches at all — rather, if the PCB were to set-up partnerships with renowned gyms and athletic facilities across the country, displaying their logos on the t-shirts of domestic players in exchange for access to their best trainers and facilities, there is the possibility of engineering a win-win scenario. In such a situation, these elite gyms will be provided with free marketing and exposure, while Pakistan domestic players have access to excellent trainers and nutritionists.

The final solution on my cost-structure deals with the inefficiency of fielding coaches. It seems most fielding coaches (even those working with the Pakistan team) resort to a standard set of fielding drills and protocols which unfortunately do not raise the benchmark. There is room for a strict training regime provided by the Pakistan Cricket Board in a top-down approach, where a “Director of Fitness” is appointed to construct strict but fair training regimens (such as 3 laps around the ground every morning). Here, the PCB may also include specialized drills regarding fielding at the boundary (lobbing catches back mid-air) and other fielding situations commonplace in modern cricket.

It would also be good if there is are similar incentives at the national team level, though it is important to grow the culture at the grassroots such that it is commonplace even before someone makes it to the national team. These suggestions are meant to be open to improvement and out-of-the-box thinking, and comments are very much welcomed.

I do see a day where Pakistan fielding is the best in the world. It just requires the right management.

 

[Pacy with wisdom]

Very good suggestions. A fabulously post.

 

[shamaan]

Absolute stunning post really impressive

Furthermore I would also instead of giving players certain amount of money for best fielder I would give it to the whole team and increase it to 7000.

 

[GoUgandaCranes]

Adding to the points in the OP.

You cannot greatly improve a fielder at advanced age hence it's optimal to teach fielding at a young age. That's literally the bottom line of fielding. Our U19 guys are much better at fielding as compared to older domestic veterans and it's because these guys have been trained from younger age.

Let's take example of Qasim Akram who has recently moved from U19 setup. He is fit, agile, and has good basis when it comes to fielding whether be it in the circle or in the deep. Hassan Khan is also in the same category.

A fielder like Abbas can be taught to make less errors but they will not become agile all of a sudden.

The best way to deal with this is to have "Nominal stats" instead of just ordinary score cards. Let me explain the concept of nominal stats

1. Instead of looking at batting score or average of a batsman, see how many catches they had dropped of them and when did this happen. Example: If a batsman makes 100 but is dropped thrice, his nominal stats should have a mention of the scores at which the batsman was dropped.

2. The entire 11 players in both teams should have a column against there names about the aggregate runs that they made on the day. Example, Player A made 40 runs but dropped a catch of a Player B who made 60 bonus runs after the dropped catch. The aggregate balance of Player A should be -20. If Player A has saved some runs in the field, say 10, their aggregate contribution at the end of the match should be -10.

3. Extra runs scored through fielding errors should be removed from nominal average of bowlers. The same goes with dropped catches. Example: Bowler A gave away 55 runs in their spell but had 3 catches dropped and 18 runs were due to misfieldings and dropped catches. End of day total of Bowler A should be 37.

4. Bonus points should be alloted for athletic ability. And instead of just individual bonuses, have collective awards as well.

I understand that the earlier part of the National T20 tournament had a lot more fielding errors due to the fact that most domestic players were in a lockdown but even considering that, the fielding was shambolic. It's high time to introduce more metrices to measure key performance indicators of our domestic cricket as they literally don't even require further additional investments. Before smart stats, datamining, and heuristic base models become the ne normal, we should try to invest basic performance indicators and can even use simple spread sheets and two people who just follow the game like the scorers and keep updating the sheet.

Ingenuinty is what we need to improve our fielding and overall cricket. Not just financial rewards.

 

[Bewal Express]

The starting point is to make fielding part of the team culture in every team. Get the coaches in every team to coach fielding or at least have a fielding coach. Each player must have an individual fielding plan, this would get players to work on weaknesses rather just some basic fielding drills. Fielding is one part of the game that can be improved quickly if the desire exists to do so.

 

[Thunderbolt14]

Adding to the points in the OP.

You cannot greatly improve a fielder at advanced age hence it's optimal to teach fielding at a young age. That's literally the bottom line of fielding. Our U19 guys are much better at fielding as compared to older domestic veterans and it's because these guys have been trained from younger age.

Let's take example of Qasim Akram who has recently moved from U19 setup. He is fit, agile, and has good basis when it comes to fielding whether be it in the circle or in the deep. Hassan Khan is also in the same category.

A fielder like Abbas can be taught to make less errors but they will not become agile all of a sudden.

The best way to deal with this is to have "Nominal stats" instead of just ordinary score cards. Let me explain the concept of nominal stats

1. Instead of looking at batting score or average of a batsman, see how many catches they had dropped of them and when did this happen. Example: If a batsman makes 100 but is dropped thrice, his nominal stats should have a mention of the scores at which the batsman was dropped.

2. The entire 11 players in both teams should have a column against there names about the aggregate runs that they made on the day. Example, Player A made 40 runs but dropped a catch of a Player B who made 60 bonus runs after the dropped catch. The aggregate balance of Player A should be -20. If Player A has saved some runs in the field, say 10, their aggregate contribution at the end of the match should be -10.

3. Extra runs scored through fielding errors should be removed from nominal average of bowlers. The same goes with dropped catches. Example: Bowler A gave away 55 runs in their spell but had 3 catches dropped and 18 runs were due to misfieldings and dropped catches. End of day total of Bowler A should be 37.

4. Bonus points should be alloted for athletic ability. And instead of just individual bonuses, have collective awards as well.

I understand that the earlier part of the National T20 tournament had a lot more fielding errors due to the fact that most domestic players were in a lockdown but even considering that, the fielding was shambolic. It's high time to introduce more metrices to measure key performance indicators of our domestic cricket as they literally don't even require further additional investments. Before smart stats, datamining, and heuristic base models become the ne normal, we should try to invest basic performance indicators and can even use simple spread sheets and two people who just follow the game like the scorers and keep updating the sheet.

Ingenuinty is what we need to improve our fielding and overall cricket. Not just financial rewards.

Great suggestions. Thanks for elaborating in such detail. It will be really nice to have data like this with different calculations in place that you can pick and choose accordingly to see player metrics.

A good software company, licensed with the right goals in mind, can feasibly build a data-management tool where you can turn filters on and off to identify players - for example, you are less concerned about a fielder’s ability in the outfield, so you can narrow it down to just their performance in the slips. Or the converse. Alternatively, you want to see how well someone runs between the wickets - what is their dot ball percentage, and what is their double-to-single ratio?

These statistics will completely change the way we think domestically- not only will it help with selection, but a player can themselves see how well they do on different metrics and don’t need a coach to tell them what to improve on — they can see where they stand for themselves.