Warren Less was also a very good wicket-keeper for NZ,He and Sir Richard Hadlee use to bat well together.Ken Wadsworth too was very good and a more than a hardy lower order batsman as well.

This is a tough choice because what I really want is to splice McCullum's brilliance to Parore's accuracy and bloodymindedness and Smith's wit and exuberance. Then we would have the perfect Keeper.Unfortunately, if NZ Cricket tried it we would probably end up with Smith's talent, Parore's charm and McCullum's consistency, or lack thereof. Given that we only have one choice, I would go for Parore for his consistancy and experience keeping to Hadlee, Bond and Vettori, all surely certainties for this team.

Chairman, you say it's all about the numbers, and that numbers make it all objective - well, the relevant number here, as others have already pointed out, is 4 million - the population of NZ. Considering that, we've often punched above our weight in international cricket. Yes Kiwi cricket fans would love to see some more consistent results, but the fact is (as this exercise is pointing out) we've produced what is really a surprising amount of more than handy cricketers, all factors considered. As to this debate, McCullum is probably our most under-perfoming player currently, and seems to be rated much more highly overseas than he is here at home (probably because we follow his every performance, while overseas cricket fans know him more from a few prominent innings, like the tonne in the first ever IPL game. Sadly these are all too rare). Smith on the other hand gave his all on the field and was named the best keeper in the world (when playing) by Hadlee - that's good enough for me.

Sri Lanka has produced more quality cricketers? Great batsmen for sure, but can anybody name me a Sri Lankan bowler outside of Vaas and Muralitharan that is world class. And I would pick at least 10 NZ pace bowlers of better quality ahead of Vaas in a team any day of the week.

ChairmanValvod - I agree with you generally though with the overall quality of NZ cricketers compared to other countries. Yet when it comes to selecting an all time team this NZ side would foot it with any of the others on show. Particularly the bowling side of things where we have great bowlers (and stats back this up) like Hadlee, Bond and Cowie, all with averages in the low 20s and a world class all rounder like Cairns. I don't think all subcontinent seamers are rubbish just because many of them have high averages because they play on batter friendly pitches. Just because Kapil Dev had a bowling average of close to 30 doesn't make him any less of a world class bowler. The point is you have to take into account local factors. Also if you look at NZ's series results from the 80s, there was a 7-8 year stretch where we hardly lost a series, and even beat the WI. Not many other teams did that at that time. Along with Pakistan, NZ was probably the no. 1 team for a time.

ChairmanValvod - batting is pretty secondary for a keeper if they have poor keeping skills. Using the example of Tendulkar is ridiculous, particularly citing ODI figures when this article is about test players. Players like Tendulkar hardly come around every day, and his figures put in the shade just about every other player. Its no suprise he has so many hundreds given the number of ODIs he has played. A player like Jayasuriya also has a lot of ODI hundreds yet he averages in the low 30s. And yet NZ players would probably be considered worse just because they haven't played the sheer number of games he has? You obviously have never played on an NZ pitch, where compared to the dead wickets for bowlers on the subcontinent, runs are much harder to come by. This is a statistical fact, all batsmen (NZ and overseas players) have performed worse over here than in their home conditions. It is only very recently NZ pitches have flattened out.

Valve, you're getting away from the task at hand, namely picking the greatest ever NZ team. Call me Susan and cover me with gaffer tape but no-one ever won a game of cricket on paper (no offense to the scorers). So even though our mediocre battlers might on average score 150 fewer runs than their Aussie equivalents over 5 days this doesn't mean we won't beat them in a test series. Cricket's a team game which requires character and other human qualities - only robots score to their average every game. The English team of 2005 was inferior to the Aussie team yet won the ashes. And that Aussie team had a backbone of true masters like McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist, Ponting and Hayden and a few other world class mates to back them up. The stats meant nothing. Give me Hadlee, Bond and Cowie charging in to Bradman and co and I'll back our chances. Our batting's a bit stat-lite, but I think Turner, Sutcliffe, Crowe and Dempster would enjoy batting on these easy-peasy modern pitches against anyone.

Let me highlight further by what I mean by NZ sub par cricketers. Take for example an interesting stat that I just read on cricinfo. The enitrety of NZ cricketers in all theri ODI history have scored only 26 more centuries than sachin Tendulkar alone. Tendulkar has 44 ODI tons to NZ's overall 70. Does that not strike anyone as plain old unacceptable. If I were to guess, I would New Zealand is probably ahead of only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in century's scored in both formats. Sri Lanka became a full member nation much much later than NZ, but I can safely say that they have achieved and produced immeasurably more and better by way of wins and quality cricekters than NZ. There are probably so many more examples I can make. And no I am not from Sri Lanka.

No matter how one tries to sugarcoat the fact, you can call it grit, determination, and so forth, but those words, no matter how glorious they sound, do not translate into championships or greatness, or bottomline, wins. Call it for what it is, mediocrity. If this is the best list of all time NZ wicket keepers, it's simply mediocore. You can try and sugarcoat the facts, but numbers don't lie. Numbers cut out the subjective and emotion out of things. The numbers for NZ cricketers in general are just absurdly mediocore compared to the other Test playing nations. The truth is is sometimes tought to digest. There's nothing wrong with that. You should call out your cricketadministrators and cricketers for what they are. Hopefully it improvges the cricket standards in NZ abnd they start producing some real world class and world beating talent. I know my country has produced its share of mediocore cricketers, but thankfully we have a lot more world class cricketers aroudn as well.

I'm a little tired of hearing the old excuse that NZ batsmen have low averges because of pitch conditions in NZ. With the one exception of Stephen Fleming all of our other top batsmen from the last 25 years average far higher playing at home than away. The simple reason NZ batsmen have lower overall averages than overseas batsmen is that the tend to be poorer batsmen. We just don't produce top flight international cricketers regularly. But I think as far as keepers go, there are some really good glovemen among this lot, I think Parore being the finest. He was the premiere keeper in the world during his time, and a classy, if unfulfilled, test batsman. McCullum has done nothing at test level to deserve a reputation as a test batsman, aside from a couple of good 90's in England. After nearly 50 tests it's a little late to be playing on 'potential'. A prediction: McCullum's test performances will continue to slide until he calls quits to chase 20/20 money for a living.