Setting your field positions

I'm a fan of the Pitch Vision website (formerly Harrow Drive) but one particular post I've just come across has reminded me of an unfortunate experience when I was a keen potential skipper at school level. I'll come to that in a minute, but the page in question is "The complete guide to cricket field settings" which I love as an idea. But it's feasibility for use amongst anything other than (early) school children? I'll let you be the judge of that (but I'll try to persuade you of my opinion!).

Like many (I assume), when I was made captain of my first school side I was given a few photocopies of an oval pitch and two marks for the stumps with crease lines, and then encouraged to mark crosses where I might put my field. I had a different field for each type of bowler which at that age was basically "quick" and "slow". Very useful. For an 8 year-old who'd never captained a side before. I think I may even have taken the sheets on to the pitch with me in my pocket in case I forgot and panicked.

Later on in my youth cricket career at the age of 15 (having captained many matches) I was given a similar task over the winter by my cricket master to be the following summer. From memory about four of us had the same task - the same old photocopies with a couple of notes on the conditions such as "60 for 4, turning wicket, leg-spin bowler". I have to admit that I behaved somewhat inappropriately.

My concern is that there are just too many issues to take into account on a bit of paper. If he's bowling leg-spin on a turning wicket then how much turn are we talking about? At right angles? Is the outfield so fast that when it beats the in-field it's four? Is the batsman playing attackingly despite the score? How attackingly? Does he try to whip it through midwicket against the spin or play elegantly through the covers? Is he looking to come down the wicket? Can my bowler bowl a googly? A top-spinner? The list goes on....and on....and on....and on. That's why I found captaincy interesting - no two situations are identical so you have to think on your feet.

So I'm ashamed to admit that, rather than explaining my concerns to my cricket master to be, I simply scrawled "Stupid question - it depends!" across each of the photocopies to answer the question "What field would you set if..." Needless to say I wasn't made captain that year and there was quite a bit of tension over that particular summer.

My concern with the Pitch Vision attempt to document fields is that the there are infinite factors to take into account and setting a field from an information resource like a bit of paper, a book or a website is going to be instantly flawed. But I'll certainly be interested in the results and I promise not to comment "Stupid question - it depends!" this time....