The next positions that we are going to delve into are pretty straightforward positions when they come to explaining about it, and have gained a reputation for being potentially two of the most tricky fielding positions on the field, due to the propensity of the fielders “taking it easy” on certain instances, but in reality these positions are rather complicated with the margin for error pretty less compared to the other positions. Every captain has their own spin to this position, and have used them accordingly while experiencing varied of success at different instances in the past. Thes e positions are the mid off and the mid on positions.
Both these are fielders who are placed either on the edge of the 30-yard circle, or a little closer, say around 20-25 yards away from the batsman on strike. Now there were a lot of misconceptions making the rounds about the terminology and how the names came about for these two positions, with the initial theory being that the positions were called as such keeping in mind that the position was one which had literal middle ground, i.e- they were neither too close to the batsman, nor they were too far from him as well. But actually, the terms are actually a shorter coinage of the terms that were used to address these positions early on.
Initially, these positions were actually called “Middle wicket off” and “middle wicket on”. The middle wicket off was actually a fielder who was placed precisely between the bowler and the extra cover fielder, and a similar fielder was placed on the side between the bowler and the midwicket fielder, which is how they got these modern names.
The job of these fielders is to stop the quick single and make sure to protect the straight drives and the on and off drive, avoiding the outcome of those shots to be a boundary. The most common dismissals from this position are run-outs, due to the eagerness of the batsman to bunt it straight down the ground and jet off. While a less proportion of batsmen get dismissed on these positions, there are some who somehow find these positions to be their Achilles heel.
Keiron Pollard was one of the batsmen who has been dismissed the most times getting caught in these positions. And this was brutally exploited by the opposing captains, starting from none other than MS Dhoni. In the 2010 IPL final, he stationed a very straight mid-off right on the edge of the circle, to negate the threat of being hit by the big west Indian straight down the ground, and that ploy worked flawlessly well, with Pollard offering a catch to Matthew Hayden who was stationed there, which resulted in Chennai winning the final. Another example of some brilliant fielding in this position was England skipper Jos Buttler at mid on.
Playing for the Rajasthan Royals in this year’s IPL, Buttler pulled off an absolute stunner in the tournament by plucking a stunning one-handed catch out of thin air to dismiss Shikhar Dhawan.
