What it takes to be in the slips

Standing in the slips has taken its toll on Ollie Rayner. "I've bust all my fingers, my back's in pieces, I've had a knee operation, I've had injections in my hips," he protests. Yet even after this beating that his body has taken, Rayner can't hide the thrill associated with the job.

"There are very few things better than taking a good slip catch," he tells Cricbuzz as he reflects on his time in the cordon, which earned him the reputation of being one of the best in England's county circuit over the last decade. Angus Fraser hailed him as the best second-slipper he's seen. "It's a brilliant feeling, which you can't explain."

There is a certain suddenness about a slip catch that belies the process of anticipation involved with every ball for those actually standing there. It's a boring pursuit, until it's not. It's a specialised position, and yet it's probably the least called upon in terms of quantitative involvement, which makes for a unique challenge in maintaining concentration levels. Often there are times when there's nothing happening right until the end of the day, but it's all the same for a slip catcher who has to be ready irrespective.

"Mentally, it's hard, I'm not going to lie," says Rayner. "It might be 5-6pm in the evening, and it's the last over of the day, nothing's come your way. You just don't know when they're going to come. Whereas in the outfield, obviously you have the same feeling, but you can read the shots a bit easier. Suppose if you're at fine leg and someone plays a pull shot, you probably have an idea it's going to come to you.

"In the slips it's more about: can you hold your nerve when the nick comes? What a lot of people will do is that they'll panic and tighten up because you might not get one for ages, and you can't read when it's going to come. There has to be a natural instinct. Often, the times when I'm catching at my best, I'm not thinking about the nick coming. I'm just comfortable, talking to the guys around me, switching on and off between balls."

"In the slips it's more about: can you hold your nerve when the nick comes?"

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Wasim Jaffer, who also stood mostly at second slip in his illustrious domestic career, even likens it to batting. "When the bowler's near the delivery stride, that time your focus (as a batsman) needs to be at an optimum level. It's the same for a slip fielder," Jaffer tells Cricbuzz. "Then when the ball is over, then you switch off - talk to the other slippers, the wicketkeeper, or look around. Then you start again. This process is very important."

The comparison to batting goes deeper than just the routine of it. Both batting and slip catching depend on instincts, but also require having a set-up which lets those instincts take over. And while there are standardized norms as to what works in terms of technique, there's always room for variation.

For a slip fielder, it's generally acknowledged that the stance - the distance between the feet - shouldn't be too wide as this restricts the ability to move sideways owing to a lower centre of gravity. There is also a certain degree of bend in the knees, with the weight pushing down, to facilitate the low catches as it's easier to go up than to go down. But as far as the hand positioning goes, a particular approach that works for someone may not do so for someone else. Rayner, for example, preferred to have his hands on the knees, which he believes allowed his hand-eye coordination to flourish.

"When you see replays, generally my hands are on my knees even when the ball's been nicked. I personally think it's a good thing because then your hands come together at the same time, whereas if you're standing there with your hands together already, you have to try and move them together. I think it's actually quicker and more effective if you have the hand-eye coordination to bring them together only at the right time. It's less complicated."

Yet Rayner acknowledges that other successful slippers like Alastair Cook and Ben Stokes prefer the opposite, standing with their hands together. Jaffer felt that keeping his hands on the knees made him slower to react, although he didn't have them together either. "I used to like my hands resting on my thighs. The way Flintoff did it - keeping it on the knees - it didn't suit me. I felt it got me late in my reactions. Just when the ball was about to be delivered, I went into the crouching position, which got me a fraction of a second more to react. I was similar to Laxman, with my hands on the thighs."

Other than that, the method of actually catching the ball is about doing what feels comfortable. The height at which the ball is coming is the biggest factor, but there's the matter of preference too - going reverse-cup or with the fingers pointing down. When going sideways though, the key is to get access to the ball by opening up the hips. This practice is very common for wicketkeepers, and with his background in wicketkeeper training at a young age, Rayner found good use out of it in the slips.

"Wicketkeepers are trained to open up their hips to the way they're going to go to catch. Opening your hips to the right way you're going, it gives you access to the ball. If you're closed off, you're going to struggle because you can't get your body close enough to the ball for the catch. Going sideways, the keeper would always try to catch the ball with his opposite hand. If he's looking to catch to the left, he'll try to catch with his right hand so you move that (right) shoulder in and open up the right hand and then you cup off with the left. I've got that a bit ingrained in me as far as technique is concerned."

All this isn't to say that technique is everything. It never is when it comes to cricket. Basically, the technique in slip-catching revolves around how best to get to the ball, not how to catch it. Eventually, it's the hands that make or break a slip fielder.

"You need really good hands to be in the slips. If you take good short catches, that's the first criteria," says Jaffer. "You don't get even a second of reaction time, so it's imperative that the hand positioning is good, you can build other things around it. But if you don't have good hands, you can have the greatest temperament but it's no good. And keeping your hands soft is very important, so the ball doesn't bounce off them."

So is that something that just comes naturally, or can it be worked upon? There's certainly a natural element to it - it's not for everyone. But as with anything else, there's always scope to get better. Not everyone will be a Mark Waugh, who is generally regarded as one of the best slip fielders the game has known, and who was a natural at it. Waugh didn't believe in too much practice, and felt it wasn't something that can be coached.

However, Waugh was an exception and not the norm. A lot of the great slip fielders over the years have put in the hard yards to hone their craft, like Rahul Dravid and Steve Smith, and some others have even transformed themselves into good slip fielders without necessarily having a gift for it, like Cook. Jaffer is also one to have experienced the benefits of practice first-hand, and with immediate results too.

"When I first came in to play Ranji Trophy, I remember our captain Sanjay Manjrekar used to make sure we take 50-60 catches everyday with the new ball," he recalls. "Very much simulating match situations with hard throws. That year, 1996/97, I remember very well that we caught superbly. We had a very good pace attack back then with the likes of Salil Ankola, Paras Mhambrey, Abey Kuruvilla, Santosh Saxena, Ajit Agarkar. So we used to get quite a few catches. And apart from one or two, I don't think we dropped any. So that's a lesson which has stayed with me - the more you catch, that helps you in the middle. Our hands get habituated with the angles. Again, drawing parallels with batting, if you play 1000 balls a day, eventually you'll settle into it. For me, it was important to take many catches. When I didn't practice, the results were that I sometimes dropped catches."

There are different ways to go about practice. Jaffer kept it as close as possible to match simulation, starting off his workload with the semi-new ball to ease into the drill and then moving onto the new ball, which is much harder and comes on quicker. Rayner, who didn't always have coaches willing to 'waste 80 quid on slip catching' with new balls, prescribes a little more variety for a more holistic skills upgrade.

"Sometimes we'll do it with a bowling machine and someone will nick it with the bat just for consistency and getting workloads in. If you're just in a garden or something, you try and throw a ball against the wall to the opposite side and then try and use your opposite hand. That'll naturally open up your hips and your shoulders to the right way of catching. So just practice, practice, practice. You also get these rubber kind of dog balls that have nobbles on them and they ping all over the place. Getting those reactions up is obviously going to help. Having done it for a lot of time, some catches felt like slow motion to me."

Of course, some of these drills will be customised as per the position in the slip cordon these players occupy. So on top of the various challenges already listed, slip fielders have to contend with the unique angles that are intrinsic to their position, which in turn play a role in preparation. Generally, those at first slip watch the ball all the way through from the bowler's hand. But, as you get wider and wider in the cordon, the focus starts shifting towards the edge of the bat.

Both Jaffer and Rayner, who prefer second slip, are unanimous in their hatred of first slip for the feeling of being cramped and having other players in their peripheral vision. "The wicketkeeper is your marker. The first slip will be behind the keeper, and as a rule of thumb the second slip will be in line with the keeper. That's the rule of thumb," says Rayner. "I've got a good reputation in England for slip-catching but I've been at first slip a couple of times, and I hated it. Second slip is generally regarded as the hardest position where you put your best fielder. Normally the new guys at slips go to third slip, and third slip's odd because you get less visuals of the balls and the bowler. I generally liked to go second slip and gully, not third and first. Either a full view of the ball and no one in my eyeline, or no view of the ball so it's not too confusing."

How about if the ball is going in between two slips? "Common saying in the slips is if you see it, just go for it. You drop it, you drop it," says Rayner. "The other saying is that when people don't go for it, you'll never know. If you see it, go for it. You've done the training, you trust each other, and you're in the right position, nine times out of 10 you'll catch it."

As far as proximity to the batsman goes, this is dictated by the nature of the pitch. If it's slower, then the fielders will be standing much closer and also a lot narrower. "The closer you get to the batsman, the narrower you should be because you don't have as much time to react and dive. That'd be a rule of thumb too, but again it's about comfort," explains Rayner.

This is also a reason why Jaffer believes that slip catching in India is more difficult when compared to, say, Australia or South Africa. "Especially in India, slip catching is particularly difficult. Our distance to the batsman is much less compared to Australia and South Africa, where you see the ball coming and the catches come at a good height. In India, there's not much pace and bounce, you stand closer in and the reaction time is less."

Another aspect of slip catching in India, or the sub-continent in general, is standing up to spin bowling very often. With the distance to the edge significantly reduced, even though the ball generally comes slower, reactions need to be much sharper. Arguably one of Waugh's best-ever catches was off Shane Warne, when he plucked a ball that had already passed him off Inzamam-ul-Haq's cut shot. Rahul Dravid's record-setting 200th Test catch is another good example, when he showed stunning reflexes to his left to dismiss Dale Steyn off Harbhajan Singh.

All this is to say that the reaction component of the whole process intensifies when it comes to spin. "You keep looking at the bat, looking for clues," says Jaffer. "That's how you figure which shot can yield a catch, and which won't. Again, these clues come with experience and practice."

As well as experience and practice, Rayner adds confidence and resilience to the list because there's no escaping the fact that catches are going to be dropped in the slips - more so than anywhere else. "I've got a very good reputation in the slips, but I drop them. I do drop them," Rayner admits. "Sometimes I take absolute screamers, and I drop a dolly and people go 'what happened?' I'm like, 'I don't know, something wasn't quite right.' But you have to be resilient.

"Cricket, sport is about confidence. You've got to test yourself, put yourself through the paces, but equally you've got to get it in the middle of the mitts. Do your overload, overload, overload, and then finish on some really nice ones right in the middle, and when you're done, you're done. It's like batsmen: they cream, they cream, they cream and then they go, 'I'll have 10 more.' Why? If it feels good, your mind's in the right place, all your movements are working, go have a coffee."