Noel David - Fielding Drills

Just as Gajanand gave us his time and expertise, Noel David, my dear junior from All Saints days, a delightful character in my book and an India International who was one of the best fielders for India in his playing days (now the Ranji Trophy fielding coach for Hyderabad), readily agreed to conduct a drill for fielding. Luckily for us Sumanth was around and he joined the drills which we video taped.

To begin with Noel took out his impressive fielding kit with a pugg, mitt, wicket, bat, soft balls...all of which were specially made for Noel and his fielding drills. First he set up six cones in two straight lines of three cones each about 5 yards apart from one another and 10 yards apart while facing one another. He made six of the boys take their places at the cones and throw the ball to one another. This was a warm up routine.

Then he made drills for close fielding where the players lined up one behind another, caught the ball and threw it back to the pugg. Other drills included slip catching, taking catches off the flat surface, throwing at the wicket on the run, backing up, hitting the wicket over arm, hitting the wicket under arm, taking high catches, throwing from the deep, attacking fielding in the deep, defensive fielding in the deep etc.

It was a very interesting one hour session indeed and we all tried our hands at all the material that Noel had bought with him. This should look good on the screen if we manage to pull it off. Noel promised to come around on the day of the shoot and I hope it will happen.
Thanks Noel, for coming and helping us out with your expertise. It would go miles for us.