... and given his superior batting ability, he's the best choice for keeper in an all-time 11 (a lot of people wanted Knott in instead) another difficulty in measuring keepers by the eye is in accounting for their style. There have been some great divers - Dujon, Bari and Evans come to mind - but others have suggested that they only reason they looked so spectacular is because they didn't anticipate as well as Knott or Tallon, who would take the same types of balls without the eyecatching flamboyance (sort of like if Jonty Rhodes had simply thrown down Inzamam's stumps - as Border or Bland probably would have - in 92 World Cup, nobody would have particularly remembered it - as opposed to what he did do, and how everyone will always remember it)

Almost impossible to say. Geoff Boycott made the point about catches when he mentioned how Bob Taylor's record haul of 10 in a match were all straightforward simple catches.

The best judge of a keeper would be found in a stat which isn't measured - "number of chances missed". Everyone says, "Healy was a better keeper than Gilchrist". I don't think so, personally. I saw a lot of both of them, and would guess Gilchrist probably missed less than Healy (Healy did look better taking the ball, perhaps because he was shorter?)

Than you look at all the types of things a keeper kept too. Gilchrist has the lot - back to pace, including the express Lee, up to spin (Warne MacGill, sometimes on real turners) and upto medium pacers (I've seen him stand up to Mcgrath and Kasprowicz in ODIs very effectively).

In the absence of misses, byes are a good enough indicator. I know Denis Lindsay had a fabulous record, though not given a lot of credit.

Keepers are very hard to measure. Some get the accolades, some don't. I don't remember Ridley Jacobs or Mongia missing much - does anyone name them with Dujon or Kirmanie?

Gilchrist's keeping was as good as anyone.

I *suspect* that bowling averages are much, much more dependent on fielding than is commonly held, but this hypothesis is very hard to test.

Of course, the equivalent to a bowling average for a keeper would be byes/dismissal.

We mostly seem to agree though, that this is going to be highly dependant on the bowling attack. More so than the bowling average for a bowler is dependant on the skills of their keeper and fielders.

Thanks David, happy to be proven wrong on the leg byes by a statistical analysis.

It's a pity the inclusion of stumpings wasn't more instructive. Though, that top 5 isn't too bad.

Byes / (balls * stumpings): Gives weird results, probably correlated to keeping ability, and of course this is viciously harsh on keepers like Dave Richardson and Jeff Dujon who weren't often keeping to spinners. Bob Taylor is at #39, far far too low. The top five, for the little it's worth, are Oldfield, Kirmani, Evans, Gilchrist, Healy.

I may try adjusting by prevailing stumping rates of the era, but that is enough for tonight.

DVC, there is no correlation between leg bye rates and bye rates. If you plot each keeper's bye rate against leg bye rate, you get a lot of scatter and the regression line is basically horizontal.

Vidhya, no I haven't looked at that. My ball-by-ball database for Tests isn't fully formed, and it'd take me a bit of time to get it working.

David, have you done any studies on whether it is spinners or fast bowlers who concede more byes (as a ratio of byes to the runs conceded by that type of bowlers) ?

Knott played alongside Willis and Snow, who were certainly lesser bowlers than McGrath but certainly equal to or better than Gillespie/Kasprowicz/Lee. To suggest that the wicket-keeper's role in a dismissal is virtually nothing as implied by your statements "You may as well count wickets while player x was at mid off" and "What you consider "contribution to the team" is really a measure of being present when excellent bowlers aiming for the edge of the bat" is a complete non-recognition of a key player's role. To conclude that all "caught-behind"s are instances of great bowlers finding edges and any tom-dick-harry standing behind, catching the same is an extreme conclusion and certainly not the reality. In 2001-02, I did an analysis of the ball-by-ball data of a few Test matches ball-by-ball data and around one in three wicket-keeper dismissals were difficult. One has to accept the role of both, certainly allotting a higher share of credit to the bowler. Let us close this discussion.

And feel free to use adjusted byes per x balls. It's just a stat, anyone can use it.