Two boundary riders decide the middle overs and captains keep wasting them

Once five fielders can go out, where you put the sweeper and the third is the single most consequential decision a captain makes all night.

From the seventh over you get five outside the ring. That sounds like plenty. It is not, and the reason it is not is that a competent batter can hit to eight distinct areas and you have five men to cover them, so two-fifths of the ground is open at any moment and the entire skill of captaincy in the middle overs is choosing which two-fifths.

The default is depressingly universal. Deep point or sweeper cover, long on, long off, deep midwicket, deep square. Everyone does it. It is not wrong exactly, it covers the highest-volume scoring areas, and it means nobody gets criticised, because if a batter finds a gap the captain can point at a field that looks like every other field.

What it also means is that the batter knows the field before the bowler starts his run. There is no information for him to gather. He can premeditate, and premeditation in the middle overs against a spinner is close to unbeatable.

The captains who are actually good at this treat the five as a negotiation with the bowler. If your leg-spinner is bowling into the pitch at pace, you do not need a long off, because nobody is lofting a skidding leg-break down the ground. Bring that man in as a catcher at short cover and now the batter's safe single is gone and the risk of the drive has gone up. If your left-arm spinner is going over the wicket into the rough, you can leave deep point empty entirely and stack the leg side, and dare the batter to cut against the turn.

The thing that stops most of them doing it is the cost of being wrong in public. Leave a conventional gap and get hit through it, nobody says a word. Leave an unconventional gap and get hit through it, and it is a talking point for two days.

There is a scheduling element as well. In an evening match the dew is coming, and a captain who knows his spinners will be gripping nothing after the twelfth over should be attacking with unusual fields in overs seven to eleven, because that is the only window he has. Most instead save the aggression for later, by which time the ball is a bar of soap and no field in the world helps.

Use the window. It closes early and it does not come back.