The work behind India’s good fielding at World T20

Deepti Sharma’s two diving catches at long-on against New Zealand in the opening game of the World Twenty20. Jemimah Rodrigues’s pick-up-and-throw from point to run out Umaima Sohail with a direct hit at the bowling end against Pakistan. Veda Krishnamurthy’s four catches – the most by any fielder in a T20I – against Australia, which put her on the top of the list of fielders in the tournament; she finished with six catches, the joint-most along with Chinelle Henry of Windies. Also against Australia, Radha Yadav took one of the best catches of the tournament. Taniya Bhatia ended as the tournament’s best wicketkeeper with two catches and nine stumpings. Indian fielders took 17 catches and effected three run outs in five games.



This solid fielding display was one of the reasons behind India’s first World T20 semifinal appearance after eight years. After India had failed to make it to the knockouts in the previous edition at home in 2016, Mithali Raj, the then captain, had pointed out that players in the outfield needed to be sharper in order to add to the pressure built by the bowlers. Two years later, India allowed 35 twos and two threes. These are not exceptional numbers, but close to comparison with Australia, the champions who conceded 30 twos and one three in six matches.



India had taken some great catches in the 50-over World Cup last year in England but had not always looked on top of the game. A lot of credit for better consistency has to go to Biju George, the fielding coach who first joined the team ahead of the 2017 World Cup. Also, BCCI needs to be applauded for their visionary approach in giving Biju a two-year contract. It has allowed Biju to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of each player and work with them through a period of time.



Earlier India usually did not have a fielding coach, and on very few occasions when they did have one on an ad-hoc basis, it was always the case of someone joining the team just before a big tournament and working more on hiding drawbacks keeping the immediate matches in mind rather than bettering strengths. Once the tournament was over, players were once again on their own without any idea of what to do next. Biju has not had those issues, and has been able to develop an automatic process with every move logged.



Take the case of Radha Yadav. The left-arm spinner first became a part of the Indian team during the tour of South Africa at the start of this year. Still a teenager, her sharpness was easily identifiable and after a few sessions, the coaching staff felt that she is best suited to the field in point and backward point region. Drills were specially designed to prepare her to anticipate the speed of horizontal shots, like the cut. The approach while fielding when Suzie Bates was on strike was different to that of when Meg Lanning was batting. The hard work paid off when Radha dived full-length to her right to deny Lanning a four two balls after allowing a similar shot to slip through her legs to go to the boundary.



Bhatia was prepared to handle the spinners on the slow surfaces in the Caribbean with quarter of an hour drill during every practice session. The focus was on getting her positioning right, and she was made to go through specific movement drills. She was given a lot of soft catches with tennis ball and sponge ball was made to catch the leather ball with soft hands and was given a lot of catches off the edge of the bat at different heights.



Smriti Mandhana, Veda, Rodrigues and Arundhati Reddy were identified as the best outfielders in the team and were given their set of workload, which included a lot of high catches and boundary-saving drills.



India, though, is not yet a unit that boasts of many gun fielders. Their fielding standards are still not up to the mark with that of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and England. One of the primary reason behind this is that players from those teams are taller and stronger with longer hands and legs. They naturally cover more area. Poonam Yadav, for example, is short in height and cannot throw flat and hard because her physical parameters do not allow her to put that much strength into the throws. Players like her were assigned areas in the inner circle where the chances of ball going is lesser. Yet, Poonam was at the firing end when she dropped a crucial catch at square-leg in the semifinal. That missed opportunity and four dropped catches against Pakistan indicate that there is still work to be done.



The difficulty level of all the catches India dropped were not high. Veda, among the top fielders in the world, dropped a sitter on the boundary line against Pakistan after taking a sharp low catch at slip in the first over of the innings. It was a case of the mind not being in the present moment. It makes for a case of a mental conditioning coach, like other teams have now so that the fielders can get rid of the ‘fear of failure’ and improve the overall standards further. The next day at the practice session the team bounced back by hitting the stumps frequently in a space of half-an-hour, the hunger of a side whose average age is 24 years coming to the fore.



The fielding will only get better as more young players start to enter the fray, and more oppositions will take note of it. That in itself will be a big change in perception.