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Fielding Positions Explained Guide

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"Caught at deep backward square leg" means nothing until you can picture where that is. Cricket names every patch of the field from the batter's point of view, and once you know the handful of rules behind those names, you can place a fielder you have never heard called anything before. Here is the whole map, built from the ground up.7 min read

Off side and leg side

Every fielding name is anchored to the batter, not to the ground, and that single fact is worth sitting with before anything else. Take a normal side-on batting stance and the field splits into two halves along the line of the stumps. The half your chest and the face of the bat point toward, where you drive and cut, is the off side. The half behind your body, screened by your pads and legs, is the leg side, also called the on side.

Because the split is defined by the batter's stance and not by compass direction, it flips completely between a right-hander and a left-hander sharing the same crease. The names travel with the batter, not with the turf: the patch of grass that is cover to a right-hander becomes a leg-side position, out towards midwicket, the moment a left-hander takes strike. Nobody has moved, and the fielder standing there is now described differently. That is why a captain reshuffles several fielders when a left-hander replaces a right-hander, and why the two batters in a left-and-right pair force a reset almost every over. Get this idea straight and the rest of the map falls into place; skip it and every position name stays arbitrary.

In front of the wicket, and behind it

Off side and leg side is one axis. The second is a line running square across the pitch, through the striker's stumps, at right angles to the line the bowler runs in on. Fielders standing closer to the bowler than that line are in front of the wicket; fielders standing behind it, back toward the wicketkeeper, are behind the wicket. A fielder standing exactly on that line is described as square, as in point and square leg, both of which sit almost level with the batter's stumps.

Put the two axes together and every position on the ground has a coordinate: which side of the batter, and whether it sits in front of, behind, or level with the stumps. That is the whole coordinate system a cricket field runs on. Distance from the bat is a separate, third idea, covered further down.

The close catchers

None of this is decoration. In the CricArcade Test archive, 61.3% of dismissals in the 2020s so far were catches, well ahead of bowled, lbw, run out and stumped combined; a part-decade figure, to the archive's most recent Test on 2024-03-30, but in the same band as every full decade back to the 1970s. Where a captain puts nine fielders is mostly a bet on where the next catch will go.

The most crowded ground on the field is right next to the batter, on the off side, behind the wicket: the slips. They stand in a chain leading away from the wicketkeeper, waiting for an edge that carries. First slip stands nearest the keeper, second slip a stride further along, third slip further still, and a Test attack bowling with the new ball can post four or five of them in a row when the pitch is offering movement. The gully continues that same line further round, squarer than the slips, for the fatter edge that flies rather than carries softly.

The mirror position on the leg side is leg slip, standing behind square for a catch off the pads or the glove. It is a rarer sight than the off-side slips for a real, law-based reason: the Laws cap the fielders a side may station behind the batting crease on the leg side, other than the wicketkeeper, at two. A leg-side cordon can never grow the way an off-side one can.

The ring

Move out to roughly the pitch's own length from the bat and you reach the ring, the positions built to cut off the single and the push for two. On the off side, in front of square, that is point, then cover, then extra cover nearer the bowler, then mid off, almost straight down the pitch. Cross to the leg side and the same arc runs mid on, then midwicket, then square leg, level with the stumps. These seven names are the working vocabulary of an ordinary field, and the base every modifier below gets attached to.

Fine and square

"Fine" and "square" describe the same thing that in front of and behind the wicket did, but at a finer level of detail: the angle away from being directly behind the batter. A position is square when it sits level with the stumps, at ninety degrees to the pitch. It is fine when it sits close to directly behind the batter's head, at a narrow angle to the pitch, catching the glance and the thin edge that runs down rather than across. Third man, out behind the wicket on the off side, is the fine position for the edge and the late cut. Fine leg is its exact mirror on the leg side, waiting for the glance and the top edge off a bouncer.

The deep

Every ring position and every fine position has a version pushed back to the boundary, to save four rather than one. Long off and long on are the straight boundary riders, off side and leg side of the bowler. Push point, cover, midwicket or square leg all the way back and they keep their names with deep in front of them: deep point, deep cover, deep midwicket, deep square leg. Third man and fine leg are already close to the rope by nature, so those two are sometimes marked deep for emphasis and sometimes left as they are. Choosing between the ring and the deep for the same spot is the oldest trade in the sport: a single conceded now against a boundary conceded later.

The modifier system

Everything above is really a short list of base names, taken on the off side or the leg side and dressed up with modifiers, and the modifiers are the actual key to the vocabulary. Learn them once and you can decode a position you have never heard named before, because commentators build new ones out of the same small parts constantly.

Silly means absurdly close, closer even than the slips, reserved for slow bowling where the batter cannot retract a shot fast enough to hurt a fielder almost on top of the bat: silly point, silly mid on. Short is a smaller step the same way, closer than the ring but not suicidal: short leg, short third man. Deep, as above, pushes a position out to the boundary. Backward shifts a square position toward the wicketkeeper, behind the true square line: backward point, backward square leg. Forward shifts it the other way, toward the bowler: forward short leg. Stack two together, as in deep backward square leg, and you get a boundary rider on the leg side, angled back toward the keeper rather than sitting level with the stumps. Every position name in the sport is built this way: a side, a base name, and however many of these five words it takes to pin down the exact spot.

Why a captain moves a fielder

A field is never arranged at random, and three things drive every change. The first is the bowler's plan for the delivery about to be bowled: a short leg waits for the ball meant to climb into the ribs, a deep square leg waits for the top edge that plan is designed to produce. The second is the batter facing: someone strong through the covers gets that gap closed even if it costs a run elsewhere, and a captain who has watched a batter all series will crowd their known weak shot. The third is the state of the match: defending a total late in a chase means saving the boundary above almost everything else, while chasing a wicket against a new batter means crowding the bat and accepting the occasional boundary as the cost of a chance. None of it is guesswork on the day. It is planned before the over is bowled and adjusted after every ball.

What the circle rule changes

One-day and T20 cricket add a rule Test cricket does not have: a fielding circle, and a limit on how many fielders can stand outside it at a given point in the innings. That limit is tightest during the powerplay overs at the start of an innings and loosens as the innings goes on, which is why the field for the same bowler and the same batter can look completely different in over two and over forty. It is also why some deep positions, particularly the straight boundary riders and the sweepers out at deep cover and deep midwicket, effectively only exist once the circle rule allows them. Our guide to how a T20 innings is modelled goes into how those restrictions shape the way an innings is actually bowled and batted.

That covers real cricket's map. For what a scorecard is telling you once a catch actually happens, see how to read a cricket scorecard and reading bowling figures. For the plan behind who is bowling to that field, see who bowls this over. Then go place the field yourself in The Follow-On.

Sources