kyear2
International Captain
Some what conflicted on this as well, but it's also balanced by the fact that some of the greatest I've seen there (Richards, Ponting, deVilliers, Richardson) were also brilliant in the field otherwise.I'm not sure a 3rd slip should be more of a consideration than a good fielder elsewhere on the field. You have 3+ slips operating for a pretty low percentage of the game, and not that many catches actually go to 3rd- a big proportion of near catches are wide/short/high that even the best aren't getting to.
I might be completely wrong on this though.
But to the primary point, the toughest catches always seem to go to 2nd and 3rd, so it would be ideal to have someone good to fill that spot and with guys that TJB mentioned, they are always a threat to create chances back there. And yeah, from watching way too much YouTube of late, a higher than expected percentage of chances do seem to go towards 3rd, but 2nd should be the primary focus. So agree that too much thought or compromise shouldn't go into making sure all 3 are super elite, at least pretty good though hopefully.