Who’s the best test match wicket keeper now?

Gone are the days of ‘keepers being just custodians of the wickets. Wicket-keepers are considered on par with the all-rounders constituting a team. This is a very tricky combination. A good ‘keeper might not be a good batsman for the team to rely upon and could be discarded for being just too one dimensional and a great batsman with sub-par ‘keeping skills might be discarded for being too unreliable. For a long, long time steady ‘keepers who could just scrape through with the bat were considered a very safe option (Nayan Mongia maybe). Alec Stewart was a notable exclusion as he was primarily a batsman who could also keep – albeit better than most batsmen-keepers of his times. Though at times his glove work to the spinners was a bit sloppy and this enabled Jack Russell (solid ‘keeper but squeaky batsman) a way into the England team (Not that they were any good in the late ’90s). Andy Flower was another exception. And then came Adam Gilchrist – a solid ‘keeper and a mind-blowingly brilliant batsman, his exploits led the pundits across the cricketing world to consider the ‘keeper to be an all-rounder. Suddenly the cricket playing nations scrambled to find their own Gilchrist – the likes of the Dave Richardsons and the Adam Parores were considered not good enough.

During the current India – Australia series, there has been an intense scrutiny by the Aussie media and also the selectors on their ‘keeper – Brad Haddin. With a very sub-par series both in-front of and behind the stumps, the Australian Vice-Captain admitted to feeling worn out and was promptly chided by the commentary team on live media. His verbal taunts against India also backfired as everyone considering that only his mouth was doing all the talking. I wrote this post just to find out who has been the best wicket-keeper in the longest format of the game in the recent times. Test match ‘keeping require some real technique to survive in the game. This is not like a T/20 or a ODI where a Rahul Dravid or a Craig Kieswetter could do an acceptable job and carry on with it. I have considered a sample size of the last 3 calender years to analyze who has been the best ‘keeper in the longest format. The groupings have been done in two separate tables – home and away.

Note: 

1. Seasons considered – 2009, 2010 and 2011 and 2012 (first couple of weeks of January)

2. Matches not included – Only test between Zimbabwe and New Zealand, 4th test between India and Australia and 2nd test between Pakistan and England

3. Pakistan haven’t played a home game in the past 2 seasons. The tests they have played in the neutral venues have been considered as their away games.

4. This analysis is about the ‘keepers’ batting prowess only

 

The best ‘keeper-batsman at home has been Brendan McCullum, though he has relinquished his ‘keeping duties to Reece Young for the past 2 home games. He is followed by our very own captain cool – MSD and surprise, surprise – Bangladesh’s Mushfiqur Rahim. Matt Prior has also been scoring on-par with the likes of Dhoni and Rahim at home. Dhoni has hit the maximum number of 100s by ‘keepers at home over the last 3 seasons – followed by Prior and McCullum. Brad Haddin and Denesh Ramdin have been averaging 35 – acceptable but nowhere near good these days. The real surprise has been Mark Boucher – who is averaging just 28 over his last 22 home innings. There is another ‘file it under strange’ case here – but more on it later.

Now coming to the table that tells a lot – the performances away from home. The person topping this chart is – Prasanna Jayawardene averaging a whopping 56 in his past 16 away innings. The same Prasanna who has been averaging a paltry 22 in his 13 innings at home in the considered time frame. Out of the top performers at home only Matt Prior keeps his average close thereby easily claiming to be the best ‘keeper-batsman of the recent times. Dhoni averages just 33 and McCullum – 34.60. Mushfiqur Rahim has struggled away averaging just 21. Brad Haddin hasn’t been impressive away either, averaging just 30.90 Again Mark Boucher hasn’t been setting the world on fire with his bat and there will be few questions about his spot in the South African team before long.

 

Tata to Dadas?

And in my first ever post (on the subject of cricket that is) I wanted to discuss about the ‘Golden Oldies’ of Indian cricket. I was listening to a FM program as I was driving and the RJ was discussing about the debacle that is the Indian tour of Australia with a couple of so-called Cricket experts. One gentleman claimed that ‘Dhoni is extremely selfish’. His reasoning being that Dhoni wanting to phase out the quartet of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS laxman and Sourav Ganguly as soon as he took on the Captain-ship mantle. While I believe that it is a load of bollocks, India’s recent struggles away from home has indeed raised lots of questions about the senior players. And the  gentleman on the radio was making such bold observations such as ‘Dhoni claiming to retire from 1 format of the game by 2013 is nothing but a hint to the senior players to retire‘ and ‘Sachin, VVS, Dravid and Zaheer should retire ASAP‘. I know arm-chair punditry is easy, but with the rumblings from the BCCI in the media that hints not so subtly at Laxman’s axing/ retirement prior to the 4th test, I thought of examining this objectively.

I thought performance over the past 25 innings would be a fair sample size. The following table summarizes our batsmen’s performances over the last 25 innings.

stats courtesy: ESPN Cricinfo

Over the past 25 innings, we can see that 5 out of our top 7 have averaged below (in some cases well below) their career averages. The only exception being Rahul Dravid. Now before you guys hit me with the law of averages theory I would like to point out to a couple of things..

1. It might be erroneous to compare the averages of  batsmen who vary in terms of overall experience, age, opposition and batting positions

2. So the comparisons have been made in such a way that the performance of a given batsman is compared with his overall performance. No two batsmen are compared with each other.

3. The last column indicates the percentage of the sample size as against the batsman’s overall career innings. For example, Tendulkar’s performance over his past 25 innings is indicative of just the last 8.09% of his overall performance, whereas Gambhir’s represents the last 29.41% of his overall performances.

It seems like the 3 older players in Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman have not performed below par recently. (numbers don’t lie and all that jazz..) In-fact, Dravid has been performing very consistently in the considered sample size.  Though a 100 eludes him, Sachin Tendulkar has been contributing 46 runs every innings on an average in his past 25 innings. From the above table you could also make a case for VVS – he has been scoring a score of 50+ every 3 innings, but the other factor that has to be taken into account is he has been registering only a single digit score every 2.5 innings, ie., he scores a single digit score more frequently than a score of 50+. Clearly the signs of a player on his wane. But is his the position and performance that has to be reviewed so damn critically by all and sundry in the country? I guess more than anything else, it is his age that is working against him. VVS is 37 – the youngest of the oldies. But he neither has the near immortal status of Tendulkar nor has he performed as consistently as Dravid, making his position in the team a tad expendable. But all the hype and the hoopla in the media about Laxman either being sacked or forced to retire is an exercise in futility to mask the team’s overall underachievement and also the lack of foresight from the selectors.

I’m of the firm belief that a batsman’s place in the team should be considered only on a series by series basis once he crosses 34 or 35. That would give the team an opportunity of getting in a suitable and permanent replacement within 2 years of the said batsman’s retirement. India still do not have a permanent No 6 even 3 years after Sourav Ganguly’s retirement. Kohli seems to have clung on to the position atleast for the near future after experiments with Suresh Raina, Subramaniam Badrinath, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara and bizarely even Wriddhiman Saha given a chance at 6. If not for his last 2 knocks, even Kohli’s position was under threat and with Dhoni missing the Adelaide test, that would have created enormous problems in terms of selection.

But there is another problem that India has – the opening pair. India’s current permanent combination of Sehwag and Gambhir’s performances over the past 25 innings doesn’t amount to a pleasant reading. Neither of the batsmen have managed to cross a score of 100 in 50 innings combined. Between them, they have registered single digit scores 15 times which is almost 1 in every 3 innings – definitely not a comforting statistic. Sehwag especially has been grossly under-performing in his past 25 innings. His average of 32 is well below his career average of 50 and his reckless shot-making has left the team in trouble in more occasions than one. The opening combination is something the selectors should concentrate on immediately as their collective failures recently has exposed the middle order to the newer ball early and subsequently to the middle order batsmen’s failures as well.

Captain Cool hasn’t been making great strides with his test match batting recently. He averages just 26 in his past 25 innings, which incidentally is almost 25% of his career. Dhoni might actually be better served if he decides to take a bow from the longer format of the game. Atleast he could prolong his career in the ODIs and T/20s. I believe India would be better served if the seniors retire one by one – Laxman’s head is almost on the chopping block but without a proper replacement. Is it going to be Rohit Sharma or Ajinkya Rahane or Suresh Raina or some other youngster? There is no clarity and this is because none of the above have had any substantial run in with the team. Sachin should score his 100th ton and quit followed by Dravid. Sehwag shouldn’t be given plethora of chances from this point on.

Anyways this is just my point of view. What’s yours? I’m interested to know.

 

Hi…

As the name of the blog suggests (atleast phonetically), this blog is all about Cricket. Indians are crazy about this game and i’m no exception. Hence the name ‘Kirukkettu’. (In Tamil ‘Kirukku’ means Crazy). I’ve been wanting to blog about cricket way back from the 2007 World cup and never managed to get around doing that. In fact I started my Football blog way before this. I look forward to having loads of fun doing this blog along with my Football one. I welcome and appreciate comments/ guest blogs as long as they remain decent. Banter is good, Slander is not. Welcome. 🙂