IND vs AUS | Long playing hours my excuse for the players not fielding well, opines Michael Vaughan

As many as 7 catches were dropped in the first ODI between India and Australia, which is something not expected from two of the best fielding sides in the world. It was not just the dropped catches but there were frequent misfields and the players looked dull in the field. This raises big questions over the match practice and fitness of players, who haven’t had to opportunity to play ODI cricket in the recent past. 

Former England captain Michael Vaughan opined that the long playing hours is the reason for the dismal fielding display by both sets of players. 

“I’ll be very interested to see how players shape up tomorrow because the majority of them they’ve either been playing no cricket or a little bit of Sheffield Shield or 20 overs cricket which is pretty much done and dusted in an hour and a half. Both sets of fielders were out on that outfield for four hours. That’s a long time so I’ll be interested to see how they wake up tomorrow and then they have to go again on Sunday. That’s my excuse for the players because they’ve not really been used to playing this amount of cricket for such a long period of time,” Vaughan said in a video uploaded by Cricbuzz. 

Vaughan explained that the players must be feeling fatigued due to fielding for four hours and gave the example of Glenn Maxwell, who is generally an incredible fielder but looked rather wearisome on the field, dropping a sitter of Shikhar Dhawan. He added that the players should not be criticized much on their fielding as they are bound to improve as the series progresses. 

“I guess concentration a little bit of fatigue. You could see that in the outfield that someone like Glenn Maxwell who’s an incredible fielder he had an iffy day. He just wasn’t moving as he normally does. So we’ve just got to be a little bit careful we don’t criticize the fielding side of things too much because these bodies, these minds, I think they’ll get better and better as the series progresses,” he said. 

India lost the first ODI by 66 runs and gave the lead in the three-match series to Australia. They will now be facing the Aussies in the second ODI on Sunday at SCG.