This year's WAT England 'A' 2007 nominations thread has not produced a lot of action... and as a result it looks as if we have just four candidates as wicketkeeper:

Tim Ambrose
James Foster
Phil Mustard
Steve Davies

This thread is for discussing the relative merits of each...

In due course (when the arguments for and against have been made) I shall open a poll to see which players have the requisite support to make a shortlist.

Tim Ambrose 24y 72 FC
James Foster 27y 121 FC
Phil Mustard 25y 67 FC
Steve Davies 21 y 46 FC

England's wicketkeeper stocks a very good at the moment which makes it very difficult to put forward a case for the youngest keeper (Steve Davies) at this time. Phil Mustard's high batting strike-rate suggests he is better suited to the shorter forms of the game. His average in the long game is suffering due to his aggressive style of batting. Similar player to Geraint Jones and we all know what his fate was. The best candidates for future Test selection are Foster and Ambrose. Foster is clearly the more experienced but, based on this years performance, Ambrose deserves selection ahead of Foster. Foster's batting average and number of catches were down this year compared to last year whilst Ambrose has had his best year to date.

Davies had a shocking start to the season (family death messed him up,understandably) and dragged it back well but he was outperformed by both Foster and Ambrose.Mustard is a good one day player but he doesn't have a very good first class record yet and seeing as we pick this side for first class cricket he has to be disregarded despite his potential.

In a straight choice between Ambrose and Foster i would go for Foster but i am happy with either who in my opinion should both be on the tour to Sri Lanka seeing as Prior isn't good enough and Read seems out of favour.

I don't know that much about Mustard greg, but what I have seen of him - I like his approach to the game.

You are right about Read - it looks that he will never play again for England (the mind boggles), so Foster should have gone to Sri Lanka.

Having said that we are picking an A Team, and I think Mustard is one for the future - that's why he would get my vote.

I think Mike that Mustard has a different attitude to G O Jones, who just let his career fade away - don't forget how ell Jones strated, but he seemed to bottle it for some reason.

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Ern

I may be a tad biased but it's really no contest and Tim Ambrose is head and shoulders above the competition. Free from the injuries that dogged him last season his performances in a dismal side with the bat and gloves have been truely outstanding in all formats of the game. Only when our gorious former leader lumbered him with the captaincy for the final few games of the season did his form dip. Unlike Mustard (a hell of a lot of hype based purely on a couple of televised innings and a Warne recommendation) and Foster he is good enough to play purely as a batsmen and his keeping is in a different league to Davies.


(A quick mention for talented young duo Tom New and Craig Kieswetter who are definitiely two keepers to look out for over the next couple of seasons by which time New will have taken over the gloves from Nixon and Kieswetter will be as English as KP )

Id favour Ambrose, he seems to be the most rounded batsman of the candidates and is a very good keeper from what I've seen. At the start of the year he looked a certainty for the team, and has held his form very well for nearly an entire season. Theres probably around 10 candidates who could push for the test spot over the next few years, we just need one to take the opportunity when it comes.

I would say that Ambrose and Mustard are the best two keepers "for the future". At the moment Mustards batting needs a bit of fine tuning for first class cricket but his keeping is fine - apart from the odd missed appeal .

I must admit i do like the look of Ambrose though, he's had a good season with bat and gloves and i cant recall many reports of him missing much .

I'm not sure about Davies though, i watched him bat a couple of times and although he scored runs his technique looked a bit suspect. To me he looked like a "stiff" version of Mark Butcher fine for scoring against your average CC trundler not good for batting against International class bowlers!

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Mark.

A very good point p_c, and that is what A Teams are for, to bring on promising players to first class and International level.

That's where Mustard could get his "fine tuning", I also like the fact that he has had a taste at international level with the England one day side - IMO a strong candidate for our A Team.

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Ern

It seems we have support for all four of our leading wicket-keeper candidates: can we whittle the list down to two?

Foster and Davies.