Fielding is an attitude, Shane Warne would often say. To the extent it could be tempting at times to conclude Shane Warne didn’t have 37 different nuggets of well-thumbed cricketing wisdom, he just said the same nugget of well-thumbed cricketing wisdom 37 times. But Warne was, of course, right, as he was about all cricket things, as you might expect from any self-respecting genius-level leg-spin, poker-playing, bikini-magnate-squiring wunderkind.
What attitude was expressed by England’s fielding on day three of this fine-margins final Test, as India batted their way to a lead of 373? What kind of vibe, aura, energy is being projected by a unit that dropped a total of six catches in India’s second innings at the Oval, the most by any England team in almost 20 years?
