Enjoyed the polite way he called Boon a fatty lol.
I enjoyed almost all of that article. The discussion around the stats is where I glazed over a bit. I firmly believe (as was eluded to) that keeping wicket is an art form that can't be measured by a stats sheet. As a wicket keeper I feel i know a good gloveman when I see one, it's not something you can put a number on.
Mistakes are few and far between when it comes to proper keepers, judging a keeper based on how many runs his mistakes end up costing might be relevant for the new age of 'batter-keepsmen' but aren't overly important for a pure gloveman.
The post Healy/Russel era hasn't really produced a proper international keeper. Boucher and Prior are maybe as close as we've come but even they werent naturals, they both had to work on glovework in the early years. I like Sanga and AB but both were always extremely reluctant keepers. Gilly, Dhoni, Mccullum, and now Bairstow, QDK, Buttler, and dare I say it Wade were/are all bat first keep later kind of players. Some better than others and all have unique skills of course, I love Dhoni up to the stumps, he's almost too quick, but he's often laughable stood back, especially if the English 'wobble' after going past the bat comes into play. Most of the others I mentioned are superb stood back but patchy stood up which brings me to the point below.
I feel that aside from the recent emergence of Ashwin and the decent Swann-Prior partnership, keeping up to the stumps has been less important as the international game hasn't had a world class spinner since Kumble/Warne/Murali. Why would englands keeper worry about standing up when most of the cricket he plays will be a battery of seam and the odd part time or containing spin bowler? People make an argument for Rashid being an attacking spinner but I can't see him playing much more international cricket, he bowls too much (No Swearing Please) too regularly.
Flat drop ins and ODIs with 2 new balls have contributed to the change in spin bowling which has had a knock on to keeping in my opinion
I agree with where the article was going with specialist coaching. The game has evolved too much for a non batsman to don the gloves in an international, but I definitely think all these guys can work harder at the keeping side, especially given proper help and advice. Boucher and Prior both had very iffy starts with the gloves but put in hard yards to improve. I think it helps that they are both gritty, hard bastards, the kind of blokes you'd want next to you in the trenches.
Dare I say it, are too many modern keepers more interested in the glamour of scoring a hundred rather than the unbeatable feeling of a legside stumping to remove the oppos best player and flip the game on its head?
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Topic: Interesting read (Read 4014 times)