Link to picture of Cricket Field Layout.

"How can you stay up all night listening to that?" a friend asked me once. "What is gully and slips and backward and silly?" she wanted to know. This was as I listened to Test Cricket against Pakistan.

I did my best to explain and thought it was a lost cause. You can imagine my surprise and delight when I heard her say, during the South African tour, that Lara should not attempt to hook those high bouncers because he could be caught at midwicket.

Double take! Midwicket, where is that? I asked and, she blithely explained, half way between square leg and mid on. I nearly dropped dead laughing.

This was the same person who thought cricket was silly. But she looked and listened, with despair, all through the South African tour and, with delight, through the continuing Australian series.

She thinks that if more people knew the positions and could follow the game easily there would be greater interest.

Cricket is an old game started by farmers more than 800 years ago. The game now bears little resemblance to what it was then but much of the nomenclature remains.

The pitch, running from north to south, is a prepared strip of turf or sometimes clay, overlaid by matting, 22 yards long. It is in the centre of a field, which measures not less than 75 yards from the batsman to the boundary in first-class grounds.

At the ends of the pitch are the wickets. Each wicket is comprised of three stumps, cylindrical pieces of wood, 28 inches high and nine across.

The batting crease is 40 inches from the stumps and field placings can be decided and named from two lines drawn, one down the pitch and a second across the field from the batting crease.

The first is a line drawn down the pitch, a north/south line, from middle stump to middle stump and extended to the boundaries. The side of the field that the batsman faces when he takes his stance, is the off-side. The other side is the on- or leg-side.

If a line is drawn east/west along the batting crease and continued to the boundaries, everything in front of the batsman and towards the bowler is forward. Everything behind the batsman and away from the bowler is backward. So you have backward pint and forward square leg but we will deal with that later.

The wicketkeeper is the man with the gauntlets, and short pads, standing behind the batsman. Next to him on the off-side, in an arc of about 60 degrees are the slips and gully. They are aggressive fieldsmen, and are usually there to take catches expected when the batsman only succeeds in edging the ball.

There may be four or five slips depending on the speed of the bowler, the liveliness of the pitch and the competence of the batsman.

The slips are numbered first, second, third etc. The first is the one nearest the wicketkeeper. Next to them and slightly closer is gully, seldom are there two gullies.

Behind the slips and gully, there is third-man. He is more often than not on the boundary to intercept balls that might have eluded the slips or gully, or shots (cuts) played by the batsmen. He saves many runs by preventing boundaries. There may also be short third-man, a position employed when a batsman shows either a technical fault or had a particular shot that calls for short third-man to counter it.

At about 90 degrees from the pitch is point. The fieldsman here is often one of the better ones in any team and he covers a lot of territory. To the left of point when a right hand batsman is facing is backward point and he merges with short third-man as none of the positions is stuck on a blade of grass.

To the right of point is coverpoint and that merges into extra-cover and that goes into mid-off.

Each of these is usually a run-saving position just about 35-45 yards away from the bat. Even that is dependent on the speed of the outfield and of the batsmen involved.

Mid-off is just about 35 yards away from the batsman but occasionally, especially when slow bowlers are operating and batsmen are on the prowl, mid-off is pushed back to the boundary and he then becomes long-off.

On the other side of the pitch, there is mid-on, which corresponds to mid-off and long-on to long-off.

Square leg is the same as point, except that it is on the leg-side and mid-wicket is similar to extra cover.

Just as there is a backward point there is backward square leg and round from that position, towards the wicketkeeper, is fine leg. These are the run-saving, legside positions and as on the off side, the continuation of the position to the boundary turns square-leg to deep square-leg, fine-leg becomes long leg.

There are then the silly positions, life-threatening one might say and some people believe the fieldsman that occupies any of those is really silly.

At about ten yards from the bat in the direction of mid-of or mid-on are silly mid-off or silly mid-on. There is also silly point. There are too, forward or backward short-leg, positions about five or eight yards from the bat, either just in front of behind square.

Usually these fieldsmen wear helmets and shin-guards under their trousers.

This has been done assuming the batsman to be a right-hander. All that needs be done if he is left-handed would be to switch the positions so that off becomes leg and vice versa.

Once you get the hang of the basic positions, the game becomes easier to listen to because it is more understandable.

The positions are all designed to counter strokes that the batsmen make and errors that the bowlers encourage him to make. But that would take another little chapter.

TOP