Inside the making of an Alex Carey wicketkeeping masterclass

Alex Carey has had to speak about himself a lot over the past week. That is what happens when you deliver "one of the best wicketkeeping performances" some of Australia's greatest wicketkeepers have ever seen.

Carey is keen to downplay it for two reasons. One, it is in his nature. He is respectful, affable and humble. There is a hint of ego there, very few Test cricketers exist without it, but he keeps it well hidden from public view and is a deflector rather than absorber of the limelight.

Secondly, as Australia's fielding coach Andre Borovec observed, Carey is aware that it's the next performance which matters.

"I know one thing for sure, he's anxious not to make out that one performance last week is the final judgment piece or anything like that," Borovec told ESPNcricinfo. "He understands there's plenty of work left in this series and keepers, cricketers in general, get judged over a series, not a session or a day.

"Ultimately, as a keeper, you get judged on the number of chances missed."

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Head coach Andrew McDonald mentioned Borovec's influence on Carey in the aftermath of his performance in Brisbane. Borovec, who is a fascinating story as an international cricket coach, is loathed to take credit.

"I'm never, ever going to tell Alex Carey what to do," he said. "I think we're guides rather than dictators."

Borovec's journey to coaching with Australia is unusual. The 48-year-old never played first-class cricket, advancing only as far as Victoria's second XI during a 20-year grade career with Geelong.

A 10-year teaching career, including a variety of subjects and a variety of student cohorts with a broad spectrum of learning capabilities and inabilities, combined with an early foray into coaching at club level while still playing, set him on a path that led to working with McDonald at Victoria, Melbourne Renegades and now Australia.

He's continuing his self-development path. A Bachelor of Commerce and Education, as well as some sports psychology modules, have been followed by a Masters degree via Muster Technology University in Ireland whilst touring with Australia.

"The best thing I got out of my playing was probably understanding how not to train, rather than how to train," he said.

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Carey has been flawless in the first two Tests of this Ashes. But he is not resting on his laurels. On Monday he was back out in the middle of his home ground Adelaide Oval on a used pitch on the side of the square reacquainting himself with keeping to Nathan Lyon.

Not that he needs to. Lyon has played in 40 of Carey's 45 Tests and has kept to 1470.4 overs of Lyon's career. But there he was, gloves, pads, and helmet on, getting Lyon to bowl over and around the wicket, with Borovec shadow batting in front of him, playing at balls to deliberately miss them or nick them off a specially designed "nick" bat that has soft plastic edges to mimic nicks without major deflections.

"He's got a real body of work, keeping to Nathan," Borovec said. "A lot of learning starts with reflection, really. So a lot of the work we'll do this week will be looking back, reflecting and trying to apply that knowledge into what's important this week. So different things might be important at different times, left-handers, right-handers, the progression of the wicket."

The trio did not spend that long together. And a large part of the time was in thoughtful discussion. When Lyon left to head to the nets, selector Tony Dodemaide joined to throw some offspin from the same angles so that Carey could catch a few more.

What was instructive was that it wasn't high intensity and it wasn't at high speed. It was deliberate and basic drilling, in keeping with a lot of the work he does with Borovec at each training session and before each day's play.

Carey's performance keeping up to the stumps to Michael Neser, who won't be playing in Adelaide, and Scott Boland stood out last week, but his revelation in the aftermath that he does not practice it against the seamers made the performance even more impressive.

"I train the basics and the fundamentals and then hope for the best," Carey said. "I won't go up to the stumps to someone bowling 130kph in the nets. I just do my drill work and go about my business. Once you're in that game intensity, your instincts take over a fair bit. Practicing the fundamentals of the game is always a pretty good way to go about it."

Fundamentals to find what he calls "rhythm" is all that Carey is chasing every day in his practice. "They're not brain surgery, that's for sure," Borovec said. "It's simple. It revolves around your initial movements, your intent, the way you set up.

"Your set-up really is putting yourself in the best position to react and then let your body take over. It's not necessarily about the look of the drill. It's about the purpose of the drill. So it may look the same from a distance away, but what we're actually working on more specifically is more nuanced."

Carey spoke during the Brisbane Test about adjustments to his set-up when he went up to the seamers. His stance was a little wider, his right foot was back to open up his right hip and give more room keeping to right-handers.

All of it had come from discussions Borovec and Carey have had since Borovec joined the coaching staff on Carey's first overseas tour with the Test team in 2022.

As far back as that first tour of Pakistan they emphasised problem solving rather than aesthetics. They landed on the concept of keeping more like a football goalkeeper on the subcontinent because of the low bounce and having to stand so close to Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, rather than the conventional agile footwork Australian keepers normally use at home.

"If you start from the point of variability being a good thing in practice, you're repeating the solving of a problem, not a movement pattern," Borovec said. "If you start at that point, that's when you can introduce things like the nick bat that we have, random hits when standing back. Basically, looking to create a challenging enough environment so that when Alex goes out to play match day, he knows that he can trust that as he uses his words instinct."

Fundamentals and instinct. It seems simple. Carey is making the difficult look almost routine as a result. But he knows the challenge is to do it again.