A tale of two flatmates

“It is possible that the gauntlet-swapping of Matt Prior and Tim Ambrose will one day attract Hollywood - or, better still, Ealing.” Much as I deplore self-referential journalism, it was pretty much impossible, in light of the announcement of England’s New Zealand party, to resist plucking that little one from the attic.

It was written midway through the 2004 county season, at the height of the struggle for ownership of the wicketkeeper’s gloves at Sussex between a couple of ambitious south-hemispherian chappies who were born in the same year (1982), made their first-class debuts in the same season (2001) and also happened to be flatmates.

The latest chapter of the story, in what could prove to be David Graveney’s final act as chairman of selectors, has seen Prior, for all his gutsy runs in Sri Lanka, pay the price for flawed handiwork and Ambrose profits: a turn of events scarcely untypical of their tussle for supremacy. See-saws should be so: up and down.

Things first came to a head in 2004. Having traded places halfway through the 2003 county season, the South Africa-born Prior, then the England A stump-minder, found himself second choice for his county until the third week of May, whereupon the Australian-born Ambrose's plunging batting form saw him dropped for the C&G Trophy tie against Lancashire; not uncharacteristically, the pugnacious Prior, who had hitherto been confined to outfielding duties, had recently muscled a career-high 201, albeit against the unmight of Loughborough University.

At that juncture, Peter Moores, the erstwhile keeper then overseeing the pair as Sussex coach, was probably being tactful when he insisted he did not regard the rivalry as a problem. By the same token, there was no doubt he knew this particular town was nowhere near big enough for the both of them. In fact, Ambrose lasted one more season before leaving for Warwickshire. Last summer, his second in the Midlands, saw him post an unbeaten 251 - albeit off a weak Worcestershire attack - and average over 70 in the pyjama game.

"It's difficult to compare them," Moores admitted four years ago, then did just that with consummate ease. "Timmy is much more laid-back, phlegmatic. He has a natural rhythm. Matt is intense.” Very little has occurred subsequently to contradict that insight.

Another had come while conducting a poll of county keepers in 2002. While both Ambrose and Prior told me they believed Alec Stewart was then the right man to don the gauntlets for England, Prior’s touting of Mark Boucher as the best of Stewart’s contemporaries (“a keeper I like watching”) stood in stark contrast to Ambrose’s lionising of Ian Healy as much the best he’d ever clapped eyes on. “He was a perfectionist,” he enthused almost breathlessly, ”and as close to perfection as I've ever seen … a role model for any wicketkeeper, a workaholic and gave his all.”

Since relocating to Edgbaston, Ambrose has evolved into one of the most productive keeper-batsmen in England. Among First Division stumpers, only Surrey’s long-and-sorely-neglected Jon Batty scored more Championship runs last year; no England batting candidate period could match his one-day form. But are his prospects of nailing down a national berth, for a tenure of Knottesque or Stewartian proportions, really all that much better than Prior’s? Or, for that matter, Chris Read’s or James Foster’s or Stephen Davies’s or Phil “Colonel” Mustard’s?

Moores’s points about Ambrose’s phlegmaticism and lower intensity levels augur well, but the fact remains that wicketkeeping, like goalkeeping, is another area of expertise that the English no longer master with quite such unchallenged proficiency. Freed as they now apparently are from those customary trappings of caution, stoicism and stiff-upper-lippiness, no longer, it seems, are the worthy-but-unsexy jobs so attractive to the average teenage and 20-something Pom.

Still, if that sounds a tad unpatriotic, consolations are thick on the ground. Among the current major stump-tenders, only Prasanna Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, I would argue, are not, at the very least, an occasional affront to the art once practised so exquisitely by the likes of Knott, Healy and Wasim Bari. And the only time they can ever be directly compared in even half-meaningful match conditions is if Sri Lanka top an ICC table and take on the Rest of the World. Come to think of it, wicketkeeping, along with slow left-arming and stonewalling, can be considered the only departments of the game that have declined in comparison with half a century ago.

The reason is not unobvious. These poor, put-upon custodians, every flaw and blemish highlighted ad infinitum by the unrelenting, unforgiving slo-mo replay, are now doubly burdened, expected as they are to average 30, minimum, with the bat. In other words, acknowledged classicists such as Bert Oldfield (22), Don Tallon (17), Wally Grout (15) and Bari (15) would never have stood an earthly of continual selection. Most of their successors, indeed, have rather too much in common with contemporary English goalkeepers: athletic, even gymnastic, yes, but unencumbered by either keen-eyed anticipation or suitable footwork. The qualities, in short, that demand more of mind than body.

The tide has turned, seemingly for good, even though the improvement in pitches as well as in contributions from Nos. 8 to 11 ought to infer otherwise. Unfortunately, caution remains the watchword: given that batsmen are now more inclined to get out through impatience than was the case 50 years ago, how many of today’s selectors are prepared to risk trading a batting place for a larger hand of bowlers? When Durham’s richly-gifted Andy Pratt, then 30, quit the game in 2005 to become a plumber, it was clear a watershed had been reached.

Andy Flower and Adam Gilchrist can be considered the spearheads of a new wave: the batsman-keeper. Or, to be slightly more precise, the bloody-good-batsman-cum-half-decent-keeper. That said, it is worth noting that, aside from Gilchrist and Flower - the only regular ever to boast a career average of 50 while wearing two types of gloves, the last stumper to score 350 runs in a Test series was not a Boucher or a Dhoni or a Stewart or even a Sangakkara, but the one and only Healy.

Sadly, if young master Jayawardene can forgive such a slight, the odds on us never seeing the puckish Aussie’s likes again are horribly short.