Time to ditch GO Jones?

[darren cook]

Originally Posted by R W S

A fantastic wind-up! Next you'll be telling us that we should pack our top order with Richardson clones!!

Well if New Zealand had packed theres with Richardson clones then they wouldn't of lost would they . Although since Read had his second go at Test Cricket I don't remember him having half a bad day with the gloves .

[Notts Exile]

Originally Posted by darren cook

Well if New Zealand had packed theres with Richardson clones then they wouldn't of lost would they . Although since Read had his second go at Test Cricket I don't remember him having half a bad day with the gloves .

ah Darren! You know as well as I do now that keeping ability is completely irrelevant as long as you can score runs. The fact that you might let a bye through the ball before the unplayable delivery comes down to otherwise get out Lara/Tendulkar/Hayden etc is also irrelevant. Allegedly.

[Rachael]

Flanflinger: who said anything about a "trundler"? I was thinking of Anderson myself: a guy who you'd always stand back to in conditions where there was a lot of sideways movement... but who (like Hoggard) needs another approach in less favourable conditions... and (unlike Hoggard) has a great line in yorkers, slower balls and the like to make standing up really, really worthwhile.

That's all a bit of an aside though: Marsh needs, more urgently, to sort out a couple of spinners who challenge the 'keeper a bit.

[darren cook]

Couldn't agree more . As was shown yesterday it's important to get runs . Doesn't matter if you let loads of byes through and drop a few catches .It's batting that matters not being World Class with the gloves and a decent bat . Same with Giles we don't need a top class spinner we need some one who can bat a bit .Also it helps if your best mates with the Captain .

[sostenurter]

All this talk about medium pacers, keepers standing up to Anderson etc. reminds of something Imran Khan used to say. He said that hen he came to England, the coaches at his county told him he'd never be a fast bowler. They set about trying to remodel his action and turn him into a medium-fast bowler. Please god, let's not start tampering with genuinely quick bowlers like Anderson just to try and prove some theory about keepers standing up. Anderson was brilliant when he first burst onto the scene abnd one of the main reasons behind his dip in form was the fact that he lost pace. Even Hoggard is not that slow a bowler - his fastest delivery in the last test was 89 mph, I seem to remember.

If we want a keeper to stand up to medium pacers, then the bowlers should be genuine medium pacers - like Trescothick, Butcher and Collingwood. I also believe that the bowler and keeper will have to have played at county level together and have practised this routine extensively - like Bedser and Evans. It's not the kind of thing you would want to practise in the nets and then go straight into Test cricket with.

In a question and answer session with Alec Stewart on the BBC website, where fans were invited to ask Stewart questions, Rachael asked Stewart about standing up to medium pacers. Stewart made the point that if a bowler gets a lot of swing (he mentioned Bicknell) he woudn't stand up to them, because they're more likely to get nicks, and if you're stood up, you won't catch thick-ish nicks, whereas you will if you're stood back. Given that both Hoggard and Anderson swing the ball a lot, it seems counter-productive to ask a keeper to stand up to them. (you can read the full q&a session here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/3617721.stm)

As Rachel has said many times before, a side needs to play to its strength. At present, England's strengths are very, very fast bowlers. There's no point destroying that for the sake of a keeper. A side like NZ, who dont have many genuine quicks but do have a lot of reasonably effective medium pacers, might be better placed to try this out.

[Scott-Wozniak]

Originally Posted by sostenurter

As Rachel has said many times before, a side needs to play to its strength. At present, England's strengths are very, very fast bowlers. There's no point destroying that for the sake of a keeper. A side like NZ, who dont have many genuine quicks but do have a lot of reasonably effective medium pacers, might be better placed to try this out.

Sos

But this doesn't fit in with Rachael's 'keepers should stand up' fetish that ever since I've seen her postings she has always maintained. If Rachael had her way - she'd remodel the whole team around one single keeper and make them fit in with the way he plays and not the other way round.

I'm so weary of the Jones v Read v anyotherkeeperyoucanthink of debate that I find it difficult to contribute to it any more. Jones is in the side and unless he really makes some serious **** ups will continue to be England's keeper of choice.

Scott

[flanflinger]

Originally Posted by Scott-Wozniak

Sos

But this doesn't fit in with Rachael's 'keepers should stand up' fetish that ever since I've seen her postings she has always maintained. If Rachael had her way - she'd remodel the whole team around one single keeper and make them fit in with the way he plays and not the other way round.

I'm so weary of the Jones v Read v anyotherkeeperyoucanthink of debate that I find it difficult to contribute to it any more. Jones is in the side and unless he really makes some serious **** ups will continue to be England's keeper of choice.

Scott

Scott - with you all the way. This obssesion Rachel has with keepers is bizarre. They are glorified fielders. In modern Cricket, bowlers are encouraged to be able to bat, espcially orthdox finger spinners (PS this is why you will never see Keedy or Brown playing for England).

In the sameway keepers need to be more than just good glovemen. This is a fact of life, and I am afraid that no player can be carried in modern cricket - and sadly Read was a passenger with the bat.

[Rachael]

Sostenurter - I've no argument with you here!

It's good for any team to have available to it a quality, genuinely fast bowler... and so long as they can do more than just bowl fast (i.e. so long as they actually have the control to make the pace effective, whether it be through a combination of accuracy and lateral movement.. or through accuracy and variation)... I doubt anyone's got any real objection to more than one such bowler.

Right now we have no such bowlers: Jones has slowed to fast-medium (though the pace may return in due course) and Harmison has slowed even more still (thankfully, as he seems far, far more threatening in the low-mid 80s than he ever did when trying to break 90). Hoggard has never been even remotely express... and it seems likley that in the long term, Anderson will end up bowling Hoggard pace but with much, much more variation.

I'm not in favour of slowing any of these boys down. Nor am I in favour, when conditions suit, of anyone standing up to any of these guys: with the ball seaming and swinging at Edgebaston... and the bowler on top anyway.. such a move is unlikely to gain very much and might well prove costly.

My point would simply be that once we hit conditions where there's little lateral movement to be had (excepting perhaps, with the old ball and a bit of luck, Jones' reverse swing)... even Harmison (if unable to extract the steep bounce he likes) is going to struggle for penetration... a truly great keeper, standing up to 80+mph deliveries from Anderson, is as likely a matchwinner as anyone in the team.

IF we could find 2 spinners in the class of Warne, Murali or Kumble (or even one such spinner) then the pressure to take this route might be less severe.. but the truth is: we stand more chance of turning Anderson-Read into the new Bedser-Evans (pegging batsmen on the crease, bamboozling with sheer variation and guile, bringing real threat to 'keepers from BEHIND the stumps).. than we do of sorting out our spinner problems.

Of course.. the ideal would be a world class spinner AND a Bedser-Evans style double act... which would mean glove-work REALLY came into its own... but that's perhaps cloud cookoo land: for now I think we should all be satisfied if Anderson and Read (and maybe, as the old man slows, Gough and Read) can sort their act out in the ODI.

I don't think think there's anything very revolutionary here.. it's just a case of seeing 'keepers as part of the strike force (aiming to pressure batsmen) rather than as part of the containment ring (with special responsibility to stem the flow of byes). We've a stack of promising glovemen (led by Piper, who's still the best man for the job)... and we just don't seem to be able to get over the defensive-'keeper mindset that's been around at least since Knotty. Get over that.. and all sorts should be possible.

Ultimately, though, I'm not really at odds with anyone else on this site: until we work out a way of making the glovework really count... we've only a limited case for turning to an out and out gloveman ahead of a batsman who can keep. Which isn't to say I'd take Jones ahead of Read (as it's pretty clear that Jones, right now, is a batsman who can't keep)... but it is to say that, assuming Jones can improve as much as, say, Stewart did... that in the long run... a guy in that mould (Jones himself, or Prior, or some other equal non-specialist) might as well do the job.

Hope that clears things up: this hasn't been a plea for Ealham and Irani like military medium pace bowling.. but for Bicknell plus a bit.. or new-model Anderson: quality bowling, at a decent fsat-medium pace, with a 'keeper ensuring that danger lurks BOTH sides of the stumps.

[Rachael]

Flanflinger - you say of glovemen "They are glorified fielders"... but what, in all of cricket, is better to watch (or more likely to turn a match) than outstanding fielding? I'd have had Fairbrother in the England Test side as an all-rounder for his exceptional fielding.. and Johnty Rhodes remains my favourite ever cricketer: a guy who brough menace to the field no matter WHO was bowling. Nick Knight, Mark Ramprakash and their ilk weren't in that league... and nor was Chris Lewis... but there are few guys I was ever happier to watch.

Bedser to Evans in full flight must have been as glorious a sight as you could ever wish to see in this most curious of sports. The closest I've ever seen is perhaps something like Irani to Jack Russell.. which isn't even close... but got me going in a way that watching pace bowlers sending down a barrage of short, pointless deliveries to be collected by a back-stop half-way to the boundary just never has.

[Whips_off_the_bails]

Wicket-keepers are "glorified fielders"? !! Eep! I think you've just disqualified yourself from this debate, Flanflinger. Wicket-keepers are the heartbeat of the fielding side. The reason that England's fielding in the Carribean purred like a well-oiled machine was because Chris Read set the example from behind the stumps. Once again, I have no problem with Jones being given half-a-dozen more matches to prove himself; but he has a lot of redeeming work to do after Lords.

Here is James Lawton writing in The Independent:
"Strauss must be one of the first names on the team list for the second Test. Ideally, he would be joined by Chris Read, far and away the best English wicketkeeper, a fact which was quite painfully underlined when Geraint Jones dropped a catch which Read would have taken without a flicker on his pulse rate.

"That lopped 26 runs off the England first-innings total. One day the beneficiary might be someone such as Ricky Ponting or Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Lara, and we might be talking 226. It was a great day for England at Lord's but it still left some burning questions. The business of staying on top generally does."