Peter Nevill should stay at No. 7 - Haddin

Peter Nevill's predecessor and friend Brad Haddin has spoken out against a rising tide of opinion that Australia's Test wicketkeeper should be promoted to No. 6 in the batting order ahead of the fledgling allrounder Mitchell Marsh.

In the aftermath of the day-night Test in Adelaide, the coach Darren Lehmann revealed that he and captain Steven Smith had been discussing a possible promotion for Nevill, who has looked an increasingly composed batsman over the course of his seven Tests, and played a pivotal role in a low-scoring final encounter against New Zealand.

The selection chairman Rod Marsh added further momentum to the push by blithely suggesting that "we hope that he can make more Test hundreds than any other Australian wicketkeeper", a tall order given Adam Gilchrist's current mark of 17 centuries. There is also a feeling among the selectors that Mitchell Marsh's more powerful batting may be better suited to a position where he is less conflicted between attack and defence.

However Haddin, who was replaced by Nevill during the Ashes in England, expressed the view that No. 7 was a specialist batting position suited to a wicketkeeper, and that Mitchell Marsh should be persevered with further up the order in the series against West Indies that begins next week in Hobart.

"I think the keeper should bat at seven," Haddin told Fox Sports Inside Cricket. "I actually think it's a skill to bat at seven and be able to bat with the tail. We've invested a lot of time into Mitch Marsh, leave him at six and let him develop and he'll only get better and better. Nev's been on fire the whole summer, but I'd leave him at seven.

"We've seen his [Marsh's] dismissal in the first innings and he was a bit tentative, but in the second innings he went out and played his natural game and looked to score. He'll develop, he's one kid that learns a lot quicker than the others, so I'd like to see him stay at six and keep developing."

The selector Mark Waugh, who was also on the panel, countered. "I think Mitch Marsh, if you bat him at seven, he might just free up a little bit, he won't have that pressure of justifying his spot as a batsman at No. 6 - in the first innings he didn't know whether to hit it or not. And I think Nevill is good enough to bat at six, his technique is excellent. I don't think a keeper has to bat at seven, it's not a rule is it?"

Rod Marsh had spoken glowingly of Nevill's performance in Adelaide, which he equated with a century due to the difficulty of the conditions. He also made the observation that Nevill sold his wicket dearly, a quality the selectors had noticed through difficult circumstances in the Ashes.

"He had a terrific game, a fantastic game," Rod Marsh said of Nevill. "The way I looked at this Test match was normally on Adelaide Oval, 400 is a half-decent first-innings score. It was 200 both sides, so I just doubled everyone's score ... and looked at it that way. I thought that was a fair way of doing it - so Nevill's 132 was brilliant.

"His Shield record would suggest that he can bat. He took a little while to find his feet at Test level against the moving ball under trying conditions in England, but the thing that we all liked about him was the fact that ... the opposition had to get him out. It's a good trait in a batsman, that."

Nevill's understated manner behind the stumps is in contrast to the more brash ways of Haddin, but he is admired by team-mates as a steady operator in the middle whether the day is going well or poorly. "I haven't played with a keeper who has moved so well behind the stumps," Nevill's New South Wales team-mate Steve O'Keefe said. "He's just effortless in what he does. And he's seamless in what he does. He's a hard worker, I don't think that gets noticed.

"For him it seems natural but he's had to work extremely hard at it and you combine with his nature around the team, we used to call him the social conscience of the Blues team because he never seemed to rattle any cages, he got on with the job at hand and he was always a bloke we turned to whenever we were in trouble. Doesn't surprise me that we see that emanate through his keeping and also through his batting - I don't think we've seen the best of it.

"He did a great job for NSW when he was playing in any position. He had to open, bat at the top order, also bat in the middle order so also his best is still to come with the bat."