Short-leg fielding again in focus

A shaky start by Joe Burns and a nasty blow to Brendon McCullum across the first four days of this first Test have again brought into focus the dangers and difficulties of close-in fielding.

Burns struck a first-innings 71 and a memorable maiden hundred, but has spilt two sharp chances at the Gabba, both from the bowling of Mitchell Johnson. 

McCullum was the victim of a savagely-struck David Warner shot that collected him close-in when off-spinner Mark Craig dropped short on day one of the Test. 

"The first (short) one I went back to cut I tried to not actually hit the ball," Warner reflected after play. "I asked him if he wanted to get a helmet. 

"It's not a position that you actually like to see, for one – obviously he's under your eyes when you've got a spinner bowling – and when you get a half-tracker like that you try and definitely miss that player. 

"I got him good but I apologised to him straight away."

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McCullum appeared to brush the incident away but the same cannot be said for the retired Chris Rogers, who earlier this year spoke about a short-leg incident that made him consider retirement as well as, for the first time, his own "mortality" as a cricketer – a feeling that was magnified in the wake of the death of Phillip Hughes. 

"Rohit Sharma swept one and he hit me in the back of the helmet, and it's only inches away from where Phil got hit," he said in January in relation to an incident that occurred in last summer's second Test against India in Brisbane. 

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"So you just have different thoughts go through your head.  

"That night I was pretty upset, so I just wasn't sure which way to go. I had to speak to a few people close to me.

"It was an interesting time after what happened with Phil.  

"There are a lot of guys who are finding it pretty hard. Mortality hadn't really been an issue in the game."

Rogers added to those comments today, saying that incident left him "angry and upset". 

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"I was lucky there was no damage done, it actually hit the helmet and after everything that happened (in relation to Hughes's death), the doc came running out and said 'are you OK?' and I actually pushed him away," he said in his commentary role on ABC Grandstand. 

"I was just so angry, and I was pretty upset that night, I must admit. Michael Lloyd, the psychologist, came and really spent some time with me. 

"So it can really shake you up.

"I was just so angry at having to be in there. I felt I was too old to be in there; probably didn't have the reflexes I used to.

"I actually think I started to contemplate retirement then. 

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"I thought, I've been hit in the head by Stuart Broad in the Ashes as well the previous one at the MCG, and I started to think that I don't know if this is the right thing to be doing anymore. I'd been pretty lucky in my career, how much more luck am I going to have?"

"But when you get asked to field at short leg for Australia you don't say no, you say, 'absolutely, I'll do what the team needs'."

Burns took over from Rogers in the position for the last two Tests last summer, and had difficulties finding his feet then as well, dropping a catch off the bowling of Nathan Lyon in Sydney. 

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At the time, former Test batsman Tom Moody described short leg as a "specialist position".

"Joe Burns, I'm happy that he's playing and happy that he's getting a game, but it's a specialist position," Moody said on Fairfax Radio. "You can't have Nathan Lyon grafting away and having missed opportunities like that. 

"It's a key position. It'd be like me saying to Glenn McGrath, 'we're just going to put anyone in at second slip'.

"You should put one of your best fielders in there. Dave Warner is their best fielder, so get him in there. 

"Burns, he's in his second Test and he just hasn't looked like a short leg yet."