PLAYING THE FIELD

One of the many beauties of cricket is that it exists in a state of perpetual evolution. Some are giant strides (overarm bowling, six-ball overs, the advent of Twenty20, and the like) while others are small steps – lbw-rule tinkering, advances in bat technology, pinch-hitting – but cumulatively no less significant.

The latest nudge along the evolutionary road came on Friday evening at the County Ground during Worcestershire’s T20 Blast fixture against Northamptonshire. Northants were 145-2 chasing 212 for victory, with 67 runs required from 30 balls, well over 13 an over. As Moeen Ali prepared to start the 16th over, Pears wicketkeeper Ben Cox ditched the gloves and pads and positioned himself on the edge of the circle, more or less on the angle of second slip.

Worcestershire are currently fielding without a keeper off Ali. Ben Cox on the edge of the the circle. 58 off 24. pic.twitter.com/X4OKNs0mSy — Ciaran Thomas (@ciaranthomas91) June 5, 2015

After a brief chat the umpires saw no issue with the tactic and on the game went, essentially wicketkeeperless whenever the visiting side’s spinners were skipping in to the crease. It seems that Steve Rhodes, a former wicketkeeper himself and now Worcestershire’s director of cricket, came up with the idea after watching MS Dhoni stand back to India’s spinners. “In a game when you’re trying to stop the opposition scoring, it’s a legitimate tactic,” he said afterwards.

The batsman first faced with the prospect was not quite as enthusiastic. “I saw Daryl Mitchell [the Worcestershire captain] tell Ben Cox to go back and I thought he was going to keep from the edge of the ring,” Northants’ Josh Cobb said. “Then I turned around and saw him without pads or gloves on. It’s in the Laws and they’ve obviously looked into it and there’s no Law against it. You’ve just got to question whether it’s in the spirit of the game. But that’s probably because it’s never been done before. When they first come out, these things usually get questioned and left alone.”

The idea of playing without a wicketkeeper isn’t a new one and in a way goes all the way back to the early 1800s when a longstop was routinely employed directly behind the keeper to prevent boundaries (the keeper at that stage being more concerned with stumpings and run-outs than actually stopping the ball – a longstop would generally wear more protective clothing as mobility on the boundary wasn’t deemed as important as it was behind the stumps).

But there have been a few more recent precursors. In a John Player League game at Lord’s in 1972 Warwickshire captain MJK Smith posted his wicketkeeper to the boundary for the final ball of a limited-overs game against Middlesex, who needed three runs to win. In 1979 England played a day-night game in Sydney against the West Indies, who ended up, like Middlesex, needing three to win off the final ball. So Mike Brearley, who had been in the Middlesex side denied by Smith’s ingenuity seven years earlier, sent wicketkeeper David Bairstow to field as longstop.

Bairstow was on the receiving end of a few beer cans, Brearley on the receiving end of some Aussie abuse, but Colin Croft was on the receiving end of a fine Ian Botham delivery and England won by two runs. Brearley, in Art of Captaincy, describes the plan as the “perfectly logical conclusion” of “how maladaptive attacking fields are in one-day cricket”.

In 1988 the ploy was used in a slightly different fashion by the Reverend Andrew Wingfield Digby, captain of Dorset, in a story retold in Andrew Ward’s Cricket’s Strangest Matches. With 11 overs of their two-day Minor Counties match against Cheshire remaining, the game seemed to be dwindling to a draw. Cheshire were 92 for six but in the middle of a solid 43-run seventh-wicket partnership. The batsmen, Neil Smith and Geoff Blackburn, seemed dug in for the duration but there was no suggestion of them chasing the 201 needed for victory.

So Wingfield Digby dismissed his wicketkeeper from his post and ordered Graeme Calway to bowl wides. And that Calway did, 14 of them in all, and all running down to the boundary. In all it meant 60 runs from the over (Calway having already been struck for one boundary off the bat) and left Cheshire with a far more palatable 53 to chase in 10 overs. The batting team, thus tempted, were bowled out and Dorset won by 18 runs with 12 balls to spare.

Worcestershire’s strategy last week was something different again. Did it work? Well enough – only one bye was conceded in the remainder of the innings and Worcestershire ended up winning by 14 runs. And it’s an idea that has a sound logic behind it: in a situation where runs are more important than wickets the switch essentially trades a catcher for a run-saver. Though whether the idea will catch on remains to be seen – don’t expect to see Jos Buttler fielding at fly slip at any point at Edgbaston on Tuesday.