Fielding in focus for Australia's selectors

Australian cricket's domestic season has begun with the JLT One-Day Cup underway, and fielding has moved under the microscope like never before.

Cricket Australia's National Fielding Group spent the winter completing a comprehensive analysis of the past six years of domestic cricket, from the under-17 level and up, recording and cataloguing not just catches but also run outs, stumpings and, crucially, the chances that have gone begging.

The data will be available for the National Selection Panel and, while runs and wickets will still reign supreme, a player's ability in the field can now be proven with hard data. And that could be just the thing that gives them the edge at the selection table.

Conversely, poor fielding stats will stick out and could well cost a player a spot in a national squad if they don't meet increasingly tough standards.

The statistics from matches are also supplemented by data now tracked from training drills and testing to measure improvements.

The new data has immediate ramifications for Australia's looming Magellan Ashes series, with the wicketkeeping and No.6 batsman berths wide open.

Currently only domestic cricket stats are available, but international fielding results across all formats are being processed and will be available before the Ashes squad is picked.

The move to take the focus on fielding away from the anecdotal and into hard data analysis has been growing for some time, with CA developing its own fielding average metric ahead of last summer's KFC Big Bash League.

That method has now been further refined with the introduction of an 'Impact Rating'. This IR takes into account both the players' fielding average (dismissals made divided by the total of opportunities) and their strike rate (dismissals per innings).

The IR gives a readout to demonstrate not just how efficient a fielder is, but how often they are involved in the game, and provides a more accurate and complete picture of a player's fielding prowess.

The data collected also extends to 'assisted' dismissals: Twenty20 cricket has seen an explosion in athletic boundary-line fielding, and where a player dives over the rope to parry a ball to a teammate, both players now get credit.

Run out assists are now also being collected and tracked, and poor return throws, missed direct hits from close-range or bad gathers at the stumps are counted as errors against the players involved.

What constitutes a 'Grade 1' or severe error remains subjective and has the most ability to cause controversy. Put simply, it is a chance that would normally be expected to be taken: a ball hit straight to a player and put down would be a Grade 1 error, but a full-stretch dive that just grazed the fingertips would not. CA has attempted to get around the subjectivity by setting some standardisation among all team data analysts, who are responsible for coding the fielding as well as the usual batting and bowling statistics.

So, now the data is there, what does it say for some of the leading Ashes hopefuls? A look at the country's top wicketkeepers could prove instructive.

Domestic dismissals, all formats since 2011

While the data available to the team analysts and selectors drills down much further, the table above is a top-line look that takes the totals and Grade 1 errors. It includes results from the BBL, the one-day domestic 50-over competition and Sheffield Shield cricket from the 2011-12 summer onwards.

It shows that across all three domestic formats incumbent Test wicketkeeper Matthew Wade has made 168 catches, 21 run outs and 12 stumpings in 116 innings.

Peter Nevill has 197 catches, 23 run outs and 22 stumpings in 164 innings, while rising star Alex Carey has 88 catches and 3 stumpings in 45 innings, including Wednesday’s JLT Cup opener.

Wade and Nevill have both had three Grade 1 catching errors with Carey one. Wade has missed four run outs and Nevill three, while for stumpings the errors are six for Wade, eight for Nevill while Carey had his first against the CA XI on Wednesday.

When the above numbers are crunched, you can derive the fielding average, strike rate and Impact Rating, and the results may surprise some who have previously relied on anecdotal evidence.

Fielding analysis, all formats since 2011

All three 'keepers have a fielding average of 0.93 or better, which is elite and where it should be for contenders for international honours.

Carey's 91 dismissals in 45 innings gives him the highest strike rate, and that leads to an Impact Rating of 197.87 which shows that the 26-year-old – from a lot less games played – is both more efficient and more actively involved than either Wade (IR of 161.99) or Nevill (139.49).

Of course, these numbers will provide just one piece of the puzzle, with runs (and wickets for bowlers) as well as character and attitude all part of what selectors will mull over before naming the Ashes squad.

But with analysts now tracking fielding data from teenage years onwards, the message has never been more clear: fielding is no longer cricket's forgotten third discipline.