Good catching as rule, not exception

London: It was on the eve of the final Test at The Oval in 1976, with the mighty West Indies reverse-grovel imminent, that Tony Greig, England's captain, made his last impassioned call to arms. He addressed his troops: "Fellows," he said, "we may not be able to bat or bowl them out of the game, but we sure as hell can field them off ..."

But one look around the dining table at the motley collection of crocks and camels and it was obvious that the fielding bit was less likely to happen than the batting or bowling. We continued to look at him blankly.

It was possibly as bad an all-round fielding side as has taken the field for England, notwithstanding the best wicketkeeper the game has seen; from A for Amiss, whose love of fielding was in inverse proportion to that for batting, to W for Willis, Willey he of the gammy knee and Woolmer, whom Keith Fletcher referred to as the Porky Fat Wobbler. There was not among us an athlete to challenge Moira Anderson, let alone Jimmy.

Three and a half decades on, though, and last winter saw a near faultless display by what must rank as the best fielding side put out by England.

The contrast between the two eras could not have been more stark. I played with fielders as fine as any: Derek Randall, Graham Barlow, and, briefly, Colin Bland, whose phenomenal throwing I witnessed at first hand when, with a direct hit from long off. But they stood out in a mass of mundanity. Their standards are no longer aspirational, but the expected norm.

This sea change has not happened by accident. The work put in, under the direction of Richard Halsall, is intensive and technical.

An example of the minutiae might be the slip fielder to Graeme Swann's off-spin. I was recently talking to Peter Parfitt, who took many catches in that position from Fred Titmus' bowling. Instinctively, he said, he knew where to stand in terms of depth and angle. Call it experience.

Paul Collingwood stood there for Swann because his reactions, athleticism and flexibility enabled him to take the catches . With Collingwood's departure, Anderson has taken over the role and Halsall believes he has greater potential.

But Greig's words came back to me while watching the recent ODI series in India. If they could not out-bat or out-bowl India in their own conditions, they ought to out-field them, but instead they were outclassed by a young side well-drilled by Trevor Penney. For me this was the biggest disappointment of all.

A couple of days later, in the comfort zone that Twenty20 appears to be for them, England were back to their best. The ring of fielders squeezed tighter and deprived India of the oxygen of strike-rotation. And, after a miserable few weeks, they won.