American wife solves England's problem

From Alfred Moore, Ireland
Sometimes it takes an outsider to show you what ought to be obvious. My wife is American, and since falling in love with Matthew Hoggard in 2005 she has become an extremely knowledgable observer of the game. You might say this is like a cat who plays tennis: It doesn't do it very well, but you're amazed it can play at all. In this case, however, her clarity of vision puts many an Englishman to shame.

She made a very sharp point about England's wicket-keeping conundrum. First, though, a few background facts. The way the English media tells it, the rest of the world have a different class of batsman-wicketkeeper. Newsflash: They don't.

We must stop beating and breaking our wicketkeepers with massively distorted and unrealistic expectations. Rather like the desperate wannabe model who starves herself in the mistaken belief that the photos on her wall actually represent real people, English cricket is damaging itself by trying to live up to an ideal that everybody else ignores. Gilchrist was a one off. Stewart was exceptional. Sangakkara is arguably a better batsman than either, but he has recently given up the gloves. His replacement, HAPW Jayawardene, after 21 tests, averages a mere 27. And by current global standards, that's pretty good.

Let's take a look at the current keepers of the main test-playing nations. India's Parthiv Patel is one of the better batsmen. He averages 30 from 20 games. Pakistan's Kamran Akmal is a shaky stumper but makes 32 each time he comes to the wicket. West Indies' Denesh Ramdin has the lowest average, a mere 22 from 27 games. Of the antipodeans, Brendan McCullum, considering his fearsome reputation, has a surprisingly modest record: He averages a mere 31 from his 35 games. Brad Haddin, the man with the most illustrious predecessor in the history of anything, averages a respectable 30 from his 3 tests. Time will tell whether he can keep it up. From the candidate with the least experience to the one with the most. From Mark Boucher's 118 tests he averages just 31.

By now it should be clear that if England's keeper averages 25 it's far from being a national disaster. It would actually be par for the course. Ambrose's head is on the chopping block despite averaging only 6 runs fewer than Boucher. Rough justice. Matt Prior averages an outstanding 40, though by one calculation he has dropped more runs than he's scored in an England shirt. And Chris Read, England's forgotten man, is still one of the stronger candidates. In his brief run of seven tests in 2006-7 he averaged a thoroughly respectable 27, a considerable improvement on his first eight tests. Which brings me back to my wife.

She put it more simply than anybody I've heard in England's cricket commentariat. The 'offence' sets the total. The 'defence' defends it. Of course, all the bowlers are also part of the offense, and all the batsman play a part in the defence, but this black and white scheme captures an essential truth about the game. And the wicketkeeper, she points out, is obviously part of the defence. He's a key part of the wicket-taking unit. That's his primary job. So my wife's advice? Pick the best keeper. If he can average between 25 and 30 with the bat, then he may not be a new Gilchrist, but he'll be as good as all the real wicketkeepers in the real world today. And that comes from my wife.