Field Settings for Leg-Spinners

someblokecalleddave

Well-Known Member
Here's an idea - if you follow this link to my main blog - http://mpafirsteleven.blogspot.com/2010/12/field-settings-for-leg-spinners.html you'll find a jpeg template for illustrating field settings. Download the file to your own computer and then open it in Paint which is a really easy program to use found on all computers as far as I'm aware. Use the 'View' - 'Zoom' - 'Custom' - '200%' commands to get the image to a workable size and then using the paint brush tool and the colour palette in paint to select your colours indicate your filed positions as I have in the blog above and in the next post.

You'll then need to have a blog or an on-line image storing account where your file can be uploaded and therefore have a http address assigned to it automatically. That's needed in order to paste your image in the forum here. (I think that's how it works)?

We can then share ideas and examples on field settings and plans.
 
Here's the first one. This field was set for me, by the captain Alex McLellan Sept 2010. Initially I didn't get it as he put it into place, but he came over as I started by spell and said that he'd been watching both the bats (RH) and one in particular was strong on sweeping across the line of flight (I was coming over the wicket) hitting the ball to deep square leg round to deep mid wicket and rarely played through the off-side or straight. The other was trying to get the ball to the on-side and had a slightly more confident approach to playing straight.

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Alex%2BMcLellan%2BSept%2B2010.jpg
 
Dave, quick couple of questions (and request for any other postings)
  • Is this primarily attack or defence?
  • What was your proposed line?
 
heres my standard field setting....
Fieldsettingtemplate-1.jpg


ive indicated my typical line as well. i tend to bowl on or around leg stump and turn the ball a little. when i hook it up the ball will turn big. ive started to move toward a more middle stump line though. most of the runs i go for are through cover and mid wicket. if i drop short or overpitch then i tend to go for more square on the leg side due to my legside nature.

i like to invite batsmen to hit over the top down the ground. we have short straight boundaries at my club so sixes arent too hard to hit, and lots of batsmen will spoon shots up in the air to mid-off against me. hence mid-off stays back a bit, but mid-on is in to save the single. i like to have square leg and deep backward square, but its rare the captain will allow it, because its 2 fielders doing the same job. but one is there to stop the single, and the other to take catches in the deep. invariably i end up without anyone on the single and it drives me insane!! instead they end up at fine leg where they are completely and utterly pointless off my bowling.
 
Dave, i had a field setting like yours in one game. the legside boundary at my club is monstrous, probably 80-100 yards depending on which strip we are using. i had 4 men stood on the rope lol. it seemed retarded, but i got dropped twice there in 3 overs against this one bat whos only shot was a slog sweep/pull.

you have to be very flexible with field placings. i had very fixed ideas at the start of this season, but my tactics have become a lot better. you have to be prepared to put a fielder anywhere that they may be useful. sometimes it will seem odd, but club batsmen have such a wide variation in playing styles.
 
Dave, quick couple of questions (and request for any other postings)
  • Is this primarily attack or defence?
  • What was your proposed line?

Yeah I knocked it up on the quick and haven't quite filled in all the details. My line of attack was the off-stump, the captain is aware of my accuracy and said bowl your usual line. One of the blokes was still looking to hoik (is that a word) it to the on-side trying to go over the top of deep square leg - probably to some extent relying on the fact that the fielder there was prat. With the field set so heavily on the on-side the other batsman was looking to hit the ball through covers-mid off region. In 4-5 overs there were 5 chances that almost all went to hand and were put down. 2 just short of the bloke at the position 'Close' point - i think these were off the bloke trying to hit to the on-side and they both top-edged and looped up. 2 from the other bloke trying to go through cover/Mid -off - both these went to hand and were put down with the fielder having to run in. The final one was put down at Deep mid-wicket. I assume because I was going for the off-stump and trying to thwart their attempts to hit the ball to the on-side trying to get them to play through their weaker off-side this would be an attacking strategy? I don't really know I kind of need you blokes to help me out here. It almost proved to be very productive and I didn't go for very many runs and proved to be one of the better spells of the season given that my season last year was crap.

These blokes had been playing well with the seamers and we'd been leaking runs mainly through the on-side.

What I would say is that I saw Swanne bowling to a similar field recently except hat he had a bloke at Leg Slip as well. I've got a another field adapated from this that brings the Leg-Slip in. I'll possibly upload it tonight.
 
This is a Bill O'Reilly field sent to me by Richard Welch at http://www.pitchvision.com/ they have a webpage on their site where they've posted up fields for a range of bowling types here - http://www.pitchvision.com/complete-guide-to-cricket-field-settings/ this is my version of his O'Reilly one that he's sent me, he's unsure of its origins and if I can find out I'll post up the details.

Clarrie%2BGrimmett%2Bfield.jpg

This looks like an attacking field to me, the sort of field I've seen when one of the really good spinners at our club at Grays and Chadwell would have used against the tail-enders. Anyone able to dissect it in detail and explain O'Reilly's rationale?
 
Here's another - this time it's Peter Philpotts field for a RH bat.

Peter%2BPhilpott%2BField%2B74.jpg

The Arrow indicates that the fielder on the boundary (Deep Square Leg) No.10 comes in once the bowler has settled down and has got into his groove.
 
Here's another via Richard Welch at www.pitchvision.com he emailed me a link to their page saying - Here’s a jpg of Clarries field – I found this in an out of print coaching book from the 40’s or something, I forget exactly where, but it does have good provenance!.. and also a Bill O’Reilly field as documented in Don Bradman’s “the art of Cricket” (1948 edition). Bradman says that this is the field O’Reilly usually bowled to – which is incredibly aggressive (“Aggression rating” of 85.6 to Grimmets 59.7 which is a massive difference.)

There's more info at http://www.pitchvision.com/field-setting-leg-spin-old-ball-turning-wicket-limited-overs and some of these I think are the work of David Hinchcliffe who runs pitchvision and he's a wicket keeper with a good appreciation of Legspin. The detail at the pitchvision website is quite in-depth so is well worth a look at.

Clarrie%2BGrimmett%2BField%2Bsetting.jpg
 
Here's potentially what I'd set for myself if I had the confidence, I think though after last season even though it was pretty awful, I've got some sense of the kind of field I'd set at the start of the game till I'd settled and had some sense of how my bowling was going and how the bats were dealing with my bowling. This is it here.
Someblokecalleddaves%2BField%2Bsetting.jpg


The diagram at the bottom indicates my bowling line - over the wicket at middle and off - looking to turn the ball away from the edge of the bat. The bloke that's in the 'Square 3rd man position' (11) would be brought up to a position at Gully depending on how the batman was playing the ball, if say he was playing straight bat shots trying to hit it through the covers with a chance of inviting the edge. If I was getting on top of him and he was playing defensively he may then be brought into short extra cover or silly mid-off, with point being pushed back slightly. In the same way Deep Square Leg would be brought up into a more conventional position. (10) at fine leg would stay in that position for Wrong Uns. Whether that makes any sense or not to other bowlers I don't know. A lot of what you do is dictated by the batsmen and how they're playing and what their strengths are. Reading the batsmen and responding to what they do is a whole new facet of the game that takes a great deal of nous. At the moment it's been interesting to see Ricky Ponting in the Ashes moving blokes around in response to where the balls being hit in the same over and he's getting slated by the commentators, so it's not easy.

I've found that neither the batsmen or the wicket keepers can pick my wrong uns and the end up down the legside, so I like to have a bloke in at a position at 10 and he can also potentially pick up balls that hit the inside of the bat.

From http://www.pitchvision.com/field-se...l-any-wicket-long-format-right-handed-batsman

  • Accurate leg spinners can move silly midwicket to the offside to make a 6/3 split field.
    • Googly bowlers will need a fielder behind square on the leg side. This can come from silly midwicket, gulley or the covers.
      • Faster leg spinners with less spin may benefit from a deep midwicket instead of silly midwicket.
        • Gulley can go a little deeper or move to short third man but always keep someone behind square on the leg side as the ball goes there a great deal.
 
Shane Warne v Herschell Gibbs IPL T-20 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isUydDgOAtc
This is Warne 1st over 39 minutes in - bowling over the stumps. Symonds at the other end previously in an earlier match had taken him to the cleaners 56 runs off of 23 balls.

Warne gets Gibbs third ball drawing him out of his ground for a stumping the first two ball went for singles indicated by the black arrows.
 

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Shane Warne v Rohit Sharma IPL T-20 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbSPOTCiwUM&feature=channel

Examples of longer forms of the game are harder to find, but T-20 fields are easy to find on youtube,the camera men scan the ground when Warne bowls as if they realise it's of some importance, so you can get a look at where the fielders are. Warne varies the field frequently tailoring it for individuals, but with pretty much the same field he took 4 for 22 in this match.
 

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I think this idea isn't as simple and as clear cut as it initially seemed as there's so many variables that need to be considered when setting a field. I was watching Mitchell Johnson's innings yesterday and then listened to the discussion around Strauss's tactics. Johnson when on to score (More than 50?) and they were saying that in putting the fielders mostly in the outfield they were allowing him to tick over his runs primarily with singles. There was an argument in defence that, primarily they were looking for Hilfenhuas's wicket and not Johnson's. So to put up a fielding diagram without the explanation would possibly be daft?

With that in mind - what do you reckon to this as an idea. If you've watched a bloke who's on strike and he's good at driving the ball and not so clever at other strokes - and has been playing the seamers with straight drives. Would it be an idea to take away the fielders in the mid off and mid on positions encouraging the batsman to continue driving back past the bowler when you come on as the spinner. Then you bowl leg breaks on the middle and off-stump hoping that he continues to favour driving down the pitch? You'd be aiming to find the edge and mix it up with Top-Spinners and Wrong Uns with potential wicket taking opportunities from the ball being caught off mis-hit shots. Does that make sense? If so I'll bung up a picth diagram pretty soon once I get home.
 
Here's the aforementioned field setting. Does this make sense or is ths suicide?
 

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This is a Bill O'Reilly field sent to me by Richard Welch at http://www.pitchvision.com/ they have a webpage on their site where they've posted up fields for a range of bowling types here - http://www.pitchvision.com/complete-guide-to-cricket-field-settings/ this is my version of his O'Reilly one that he's sent me, he's unsure of its origins and if I can find out I'll post up the details.

Clarrie%2BGrimmett%2Bfield.jpg

This looks like an attacking field to me, the sort of field I've seen when one of the really good spinners at our club at Grays and Chadwell would have used against the tail-enders. Anyone able to dissect it in detail and explain O'Reilly's rationale?


This field looks to me like its set up with the googly and topspinner very much at the forefront of his mind.
 
Can I ask those of you that have got sky and the ability to record it, can you record the Wrist Spinners when they come on as Sky are momentarily putting up a little graphic that shows their field settings. Then copy the positions and post them up here maybe? If you watch the spell maybe write a little about what it was the bowler was trying to do with regards that specific field setting?

Dave
 
The IPL coverage on Youtube so far has been superb, primarily because there's no adverts. So if you're looking for a Shane Warne fix you should check it out. In the meantime here's Warnes field setting for his first over in the match against Dehli Daredevils, Unmukt Chand who he dismisses first ball up, going over the wicket top edges to Dravid in the slips, ball having picthed around middle and breaking towards off. Warne IPL v Unmukt Chand.jpg
 
Here's another Warne field for T20. Not a great deal of difference from the former post, the only real difference is that the cover fielder is a lot closer in to the track.
Warne%2BIPL%2Bv%2BJaggi%2B%2526%2BChipli.jpg
IPL 2011 MATCH02 - DC vs RR, 2011-04-09
 
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