A Perfect 36

Here's the BBC article about what Herschelle Gibbs accomplished in one over against Holland yesterday. It's very impressive, hitting all 6 balls for six. It's actually easier for me, given my level of talent, to identify with the bowler, Daan van Bunge. To his credit, he did not bowl any extras in the over. Given the hammering he was taking it would have been understandable for him to get rattled or try something beyond his abilities.

I once heard an interview with an English club cricketer who hit 7 sixes in an over, thanks to a no-ball. So that's a 43-run over for some unfortunate club bowler.

What caught my attention in the article was that the Dutch captain did not know where to place his fielders. Suppose you're the captain, and your opponents need 6 off the last ball to win. And let's say the on-strike batsman is Gibbs and the bowler is van Bunge (sounds a lot better than "the bowler's Holding; the batsman's Willey"). Where do you place your fielders?

I don't know whether it's in the spirit of the game (there's a bit of Jardine in me, I guess), but I would put fielders OUTSIDE the boundary. If I understand law 32 correctly (if you're an accredited umpire and disagree, please leave an explanatory comment), a fielder can prevent a six by catching the ball in the air, even well outside the rope, and throwing the ball back in play (as long as the ball is released before his feet touch the ground).

From that point on, it probably makes more sense for the fielder to pick up the ball and throw it back to the bowler or keeper in a hurry. If the batsmen have not scored a run by the time the ball is reached I believe the fielder could throw the ball over the rope to end the match with a 1-run win, but law 19 makes this scenario very risky. If the fielder throws the ball over the rope, the batting side gets the 4 runs plus whatever runs the batsmen have taken before the throw went over the rope. By the time the ball goes to the extra-deep fielder and back in play, and the fielder gets in to pick it up, the batsmen will likely have scored a run, and the fieldsman will not have had the opportunity to check whether or not they have (or, even worse, he might not notice a no-ball signal from the umpire). So the best bet is to get the ball in before they can run 5 for a tie or 6 for the win.

Another radical fielding idea more appropriate for the actual scenario of Gibbs' heroics (i.e. not chasing, and there's one ball in the over after he's scored 30 off the first 5 balls) would be to put fielders at the boundary in pairs - one inside and one outside. So the one outside could try to take the ball with feet off the ground and lob the ball in for the other fielder to take the catch. Don't leave anyone but the bowler and the keeper more than 5 yards inside the boundary. In that scenario, Gibbs might think twice about trying to hit the big one.