It’s hard to over-emphasize the point that in cricket (and in most games), statistics can never tell the whole story, and that fielding is much more difficult to judge accurately by statistics.

I think it’s still a worthwhile idea to at least get as close as possible to developing an objective system to quantify a fielder’s contribution to his team.

Infact, in 1997, when India toured the West Indies under Tendulkar, a rather crude ‘Fielding Scorecard’ was used by the broadcasters (though not the official scoreboard). It displayed the number of runs the fielder had saved (or let through), compared to what may have been expected of him (subjectively, i guess) under the circumstances. Along with it, it also showed how many catches the fielder had taken and how many run-outs he’d contributed to.

However, I would beg to differ with the author when he says the fielder’s height should be a factor. We don’t, for instance, use a fast bowler’s height when calculating bowling averages, even though taller fast bowlers can generate more bounce than their shorter counterparts. Similarly we don’t take into account how muscular a batsman is when considering his strike rate.

It may well be true that taller fielders are better fielders (though lanky and clumsy fast bowlers may ruin that hypothesis), but surely the statistic should be a measure of how effective a fielder is, and not just a measure of how good he is for someone of his height.

However I think such a measure would be inherently more subjective than bowling and batting counterparts, as it is not straightforward to determine how many runs a brilliant piece of fielding saves.

There are problems with traditional fielding statistics

(http://www.pervoprohodcy.ru/baseball/book2/html/032.htm)

There is a danger of getting carried away with statistics (especially in cricket). Does a batsman’s average, for example, really tell the whole story?

I think that the type of person who follows cricket (and I include myself in this) is likely to be the type of person who can get carried away by stats, and the existance and popularity of Statsguru bears this out.

Even if some ‘definitive’ statistic for fielding were to be developed, the chances are that it would be subjective to at least some degree.

Because then we can objectively say A is a better fielder than B!

I know statistics is not the best judge, but numbers always help!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_statistics#Fielding_statistics

You would have to start keeping track of how many balls a fielder is on the field etc for.

Errors in baseball are determined by the official scorer. Usually if an extra base (i.e. runs) or it cost the fielding team an out.