Horse 1409 - Fine Leg

On most sporting fields and in most sports, although the whole field of play is available to be used, most passages of play occur in localised areas. In virtually all codes of football this tends to be concentrated in front of the goals and in tennis it mainly occurs just in front of the base lines.
In cricket it is fairly obvious that most of the action is going to take place on the pitch and this is true for all forms of the game. In the lower grades, there tend to be a higher concentration of shots scored through "cow corner" between deep mid-wicket and wide long-on, because the skill of the batsmen is much much lower. The higher the grades, the higher the concentration of drives and glides through point to the covers between point and mid-off.
The one position on the whole field which I look on with disdain at, is Fine Leg.

Most bowlers who are looking to make the ball work for them, tend to have the ball pitching from centre stump to a width outside. The idea of course is that you want batsmen either playing at the ball and getting an edge for the wicket-keeper or slips to catch, or that if you are bowling closer to the stumps, to not give the batsman a chance to play leg glances off the toes of shins.
Really the only reason that a shot need ever pass from the area between backward of square through to the radius behind the keeper is that there was a loose delivery and/or the wicket-keeper wasn't expecting it.


Fine Leg to me is basically an admission that either the bowling is inaccurate or that the wicket-keeper is incompetent. Fine Leg is almost exclusively reserved either fast bowlers so that they can have a chance to rest between their overs, or a player who you think is so incredibly bad at fielding, that they're only one step away from not being on the field at all.

The position is probably the one with the least amount of glory on the field but also the one which will get you   a fair amount of hard stares. Even if someone fielding in Fine Leg is completely alert, there shouldn't really be any more than about five shots pass through there in a day. A poor fielder who has to go from Fine Leg to the opposite Fine Leg makes the furthest journey out of anyone on the whole field and  if you are trying to get through your overs quickly, is afforded the least amount of sympathy.

To be honest, if you do have a fielder who you think is quite frankly not up to the job, then a captain probably should put them into 3rd Slip. A fielder will then be involved in the game far more heavily and if they're only a casual or a new player will learn by example, how captains make decisions and how they set fields. If you a captain and do decide to place a fielder in Fine Leg because the whole entire passage of play happens somewhere "out there" off in the distance relative to the fielder, don't blame them if they tend to daydream because it was your fault they were there in the first place.

Fine Leg is for all intents and purposes, a waste of a fielder and a disincentive for them to want to play again. For the vast majority of us who aren't paid to play and play this at times unfathomable game, is it the equivalent of a fielding death sentence. So don't do it.