What Are the Different Fielding Positions in Cricket?

The fielding positions in cricket may be baffling at first glance but they are easy to understand once you realise they fall into three categories. The first divides the field up into areas to cover. The second is a special category for catching the ball. And the third plugs a few gaps where batters might be particularly likely to hit the ball.

It’s important to remember that while teams use common terms for fielding positions, they tend to refer to a general area rather than a precise placement. You’ll sometimes see even world class captains having to give players extra instructions because they had different ideas of where the position is. What really matters is what the captain wants the fielder to do in a particular position. In this guide we’re aiming to help you understand the overall picture rather than be precise about every possible position.

Category 1: Areas of The Pitch

Most fielding positions are defined in three ways, all about the position of the fielder in relation to the batter. These three ways are: what side of the wicket the player is on the field, what angle the player is to the batter, and how far the fielder is from the batter.

On side vs Off Side

When cricketers talking about placement, the first major factor is what side of the field they are on. This involves an imaginary line running from boundary to boundary and passing through the wicket longways.

Batters stand side-on to the bowler. The side their legs are on is called the on side, also called the leg side. The side their bat is on is called the off side. (“Leg”, “on” and “off” are all used in the names of fielding positions.

Another way to remember is to picture the scene from the bowler’s perspective (which is the way we always see the pitch on TV as the ball is being bowled.) With a right-handed batter, the on side is to the right. With a left-handed batter, the on side is to the left.

In most cases, a batter will find it easier to hit to the on side because they can bring the bat across their body with more force. If the fielding team think the batter is likely to hit the ball well on most deliveries, they’ll often put more fielders on the on side.

Angles to the batter

The next way to divide up the field is four main areas at different angles to the batter. Let’s look at these angles for the on (leg) side. These positions are all roughly half-way between the wicket and the boundary.

Mid-Wicket is roughly 45 degrees anti-clockwise from a straight line running from the batter down the wicket to the boundary. Put another way, it’s around 4 to 4.30 on a clock.

Mid-On is somewhere in the area between mid-wicket and a straight line running from the batter down the wicket to the boundary. Put another way it’s around 5 on a clock.

Square leg is somewhere around the line running at right angles to the wicket. (Imagine a line running across the field that goes through all three stumps.)

Fine leg is somewhere between the square leg line and a line straight behind the batter to the boundary.

Distance

For most of the angles, there are variants that are closer to the boundary (usually called deep but sometimes long) and close to the wicket (usually called short.) Sometimes a fielder comes in even closer than the short variant to a position called “silly”, the common joke being that you’d have to be silly to stand there given the risk of the ball hitting you.

Off Side Positions

The same system for splitting the field up by angles and distance applies for fielding positions on the off-side. However, the words are different. Mid-On’s counterpart is simple enough: it’s Mid-Off. However, the equivalent of Mid-Wicket is called Cover, Square Leg’s equivalent is Point, and Fine Leg’s equivalent is Third Man.

 

If you can remember these three distinctions (on vs off, the four angles, deep and short variants) along with the different terms used on the offside, you’ll realise that just two or three words lets you know which of around 24 areas of the field somebody is talking about.

Most of these fielding positions are about covering areas of the pitch in case the ball goes there. (As we’ve talked about 24 positions and teams only have nine fielders other than the bowler and wicket keeper, you can see why teams have to think carefully about where to place fielders.) Now let’s look at some special positions.

Category 2: Close Catching Positions

Some fielding positions aren’t about covering an area of the pitch to stop the ball, but instead about trying to catch the ball. These include:

Slips stand just behind the wicket keeper on the offside. The first slip will be closest to the wicket keeper. The rest of the slips follow a line that comes towards the bowler but away from the batter on the offside.

Gully is the position you’d reach if you followed the line of slips all the way until they were almost in line with the batter. A gully stands in this position regardless of how many slips the team is using.

Usually the slips and gully are trying to catch balls that come off the edge of the bat. This is most common with a poor batter (such as someone late in the batting lineup who is a specialist bowler) or with spin bowling where the ball movement surprised the batter.

If the ball comes off the outside edge (the one furthest from the batter’s body) the ball will often go to the area the slips and gully cover. If the ball comes off the inside edge, it’s more likely going to hit the batter, the stumps, or the area covered by the wicket keeper. However, sometimes teams use a leg slip, which logically enough is a fielder in the same positions as a slip but on the leg side. As the ball is less likely to end up here, leg slip is most often used when a team is much more concerned with taking a wicket (for example to stop the other team hanging on for a draw) than stopping runs.

Category 3: Special field positions

We’ve talked about the four main angles for fielders, but these can leave gaps. Thanks to geometry, these gaps are bigger as you get close to the boundary, which can make it easier for a good batter to hit the ball into a space where fielders in the main positions can’t reach.

To overcome this, teams sometimes put fielders in positions that fill these gaps. This usually makes sense in places a batter is particularly likely to reach when hitting the ball cleanly. Examples include:

Cow Corner is close to the boundary between Long On and Deep Mid Wicket.

Backward Square Leg is in the gap between Square Leg and Fine Leg.

Extra Cover is in the gap between Cover and Point. (Confusingly, some teams call this “Cover Point” and instead use “Extra Cover” to mean the gap between Cover and Mid-Off.)

Straight Hit is on the boundary directly in line with the wicket, behind the bowler. This is often used if the batter has been hitting shots to this position, known as “straight down the ground.”

Long stop is on the boundary directly in line with the wicket, behind the batter. This could be useful if the wicket keeper was positioned close to the batter and the bowler wanted to use a surprise fast delivery. (This increases the chance of the ball going past the wicket towards the boundary.)

 

Fielding Restrictions

Fielding teams have two main restrictions on where they can place fielders.

In many limited over games, only a certain number of players are allowed outside of a “circle” (sometimes imaginary, sometimes marked). The circle is actually an elongated oval as it is a line that is 30 yards from the nearest set of stumps. In some cases, the number allowed outside the circle is reduced for specific periods in the match (such as a “powerplay”). The number may also be reduced if the team doesn’t begin bowling its last over by a particular time. The rules for this type of restriction vary between different competitions.

In all cricket games, only two fielders are allowed in a particular area of the field behind the bowler on the leg side. This area is created by imaginary lines running from the leg stump to the boundary, one directly behind the bowler and one at a right angle. These lines pass through the traditional fielding positions of square leg and long stop.

The reason for this rule is to discourage “bodyline” bowling, where the ball is aimed high at the bowler on the leg side (in other words away from the bat). The aim of this tactic is to make the bowler defend themselves by ducking or swerving and hitting the ball, which will often make them vulnerable to catches in this area of the field. The tactic is historically very controversial as it creates a high risk of injury. The fielding restriction reduces the benefit of using the tactic: previously some teams would put numerous fielders in this area when bowling this way.

 

(All images adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cricket_fielding_positions2.svg, used under  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)