Setting the field - how difficult can it be?

So you've done the difficult bit and chosen who you want where, now all you have to do is communicate that to your men. One veteran slow bowler in our club has recently selected a new method of doing this, which is to point in several different directions very quickly without making any sort of contact, eye or verbal, with anybody he wants to move. I hope it convinces the batsmen that he knows what he's doing because it doesn't half cause confusion in his team mates, particularly when he's pointing in one direction and looking in another.

Yesterday I saw another example of confusion when the skipper at deep mid wicket was trying to get deep extra into a precisely chosen location against the noise of a steady stream of traffic behind the sight screen - no chance.

All it needs is four signals, wider, straighter, deeper and closer - perhaps we should invent them. On Sunday, when I've got to captain my local pub, I'm sure I'm going to see super eager fielders settting out to move from fine leg to fine leg and from deep extra to deep extra at the end of the first over - yet another type of chaos!