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 I watched some Test cricket in Mumbai this week, it was enthralling viewing. All 28 minutes of it!
I decided to keep the faith with England’s middle to lower order (Jos Buttler was batting after all) and take the three touring Millfield cricket squads to watch the final days play.
Michael Vaughan had warned me the night before that it could be over quickly. He thought that England would take a very aggressive route to try and bash themselves ahead of India and then have a dart at the top order.
But the English batters had all the life squeezed out of them by both good spin bowling and wonderful field settings.
As we watched the game from our elevated perch in the North Stand of the Wankhede Stadium, the boys and girls started to talk about the different field settings that they were seeing in front of them. They commented that in English conditions, you either attacked with your field or defended with your field and never the two should mix.
It’s a very standard, traditional and very English way of going about setting a field.
The contrast being played out in front of these young cricketers was that Virat Kohli deployed his fielders in either an attacking fashion (slip, leg slip, short leg, bat pad offside) or they would be posted out on the boundary.
The dismissals of Chris Woakes was a classic example of how a clever field can build pressure and can make a batsman play a high risk or inappropriate shot.
Let’s break that down and look into the dismissal in more detail.
Chris Woakes: Bowled through the gate attempting to drive the ball against the spin.
The field: slip, leg slip, short leg, mid off, mid on, deep square, deep mid on, cover point, man on the drive leg side.
Gaps are as important as fielders: The massive gap between mid off and cover point was a an attraction to Chris Woakes. You could see that he was looking to hit that gap against the spin as he was eyeing it up from the moment he faced Ashwin. Kohli uses his gaps so cleverly.
Kohli didn’t employ a man on the drive for the England batters throughout most of the innings but did for Woakes in the 2nd innings. He set the “tempting” gap at cover to lure Woakes in and also deployed a leg side drive man for the miscued cover drive that hits the inside half of the bat and spoons into the leg side.
Whilst Ashwin got Woakes with the ultimate off spinners dismissal (through the gate), he also had the the contingency of the catcher as well.
It was great for the children to see the tactics unfold and how the combination of an in/out field and strategic gaps can build pressure and effect dismissals.
The challenge now is to use these tactics in the next 10 days of our tour and then to adapt them to English conditions when we get back to cold and damp England.
How can you learn from Kohli and Ashwin approach to field setting?
Can you adapt these tactics into your cricketing conditions?
Give it a go!
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Recently, I had a great discussion with coach Ian Pont about the use of stats in predicting the future. Now I want to know what you think.
It’s shocking to see so many cricket players sabotage their chances by lying.
