What would you want for a keeper?

[morgieb]

...

 

[Burgey]

An excellent keeper and an excellent batsman tbh .

Of the options listed, went for number 1.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Pointless poll without the option of Top Class Keeper/batting not important.

 

[Richard]

An inadequate wicketkeeper is not an acceptable option; a wicketkeeper who cannot bat at all is not an acceptable option. There will be a variety of options which will and will not be available at different times; when you get very lucky you'll have a player who is both Test-class batsman and good-to-excellent wicketkeeper, but this is exceptionally rare. If you cannot at any point have someone who is competent with gloves and reasonable lower-order at worst with bat then you're pretty unlucky.

Basically I always say that a wicketkeeper's wicketkeeping must meet a minimum standard and once it does so, strength of batting is overwhelmingly the most important consideration thereafter.

 

[zaremba]

OK keeper and excellent batsman for me, unless I have exceptional spinners in which case the keeping becomes more important.

Poll choices a bit limited itbt

 

[Richard]

Sort of thing you can't really hope to have much of a poll on IMO. The options are many and broad, and far from limited to a mere 2. And as I say, different options will and will not be available at any given time - as pointed-out in the maiden reply, the ideal option which anyone would take if given the choice of creating a player out of thin-air is World-class batsman and outstanding wicketkeeper.

 

[zaremba]

Yep but assuming we're going to have to compromise (which is the premise of the thread) I'd compromise on the keeping - but not to the extent that you pick a "poor" keeper. Broadly agree with your viewpoint on this tbh

 

[Goughy]

Yep but assuming we're going to have to compromise (which is the premise of the thread) I'd compromise on the keeping - but not to the extent that you pick a "poor" keeper. Broadly agree with your viewpoint on this tbh

Yeah, you pick the best bat of the decent or better keepers available.

 

[G.I.Joe]

a very good batsman/decent keeper

The second poll option isn't the bizarro world equivalent of the first on the poll.

 

[Top_Cat]

Depends on team balance, for mine.

 

[Cruxdude]

Missing the choice Safe keeper Good Batsman.

 

[JBMAC]

Pointless poll without the option of Top Class Keeper/batting not important.

Definitely agree with this!

 

[AaronK]

I want Kumara Sangakara..

second option Kamran akmal if he continues with his keeping form.. but u never know he may drop sitters llol

 

[anoop4real]

Good batsman and excellent keeper............

 

[Black_Warrior]

I picked decent batsman and excellent keeper. Thats because a keeper dropping catches is simply unacceptable whereas a keeper scoring a duck is still ok. My approach has always been, that it is the responsibility of top 5/6 batsmen to score the runs, if I have to rely on my keeper to score runs for me, I'd rather kick out my pathetic batsmen.

Now if you have a Gilchrist at the top of the innings especially in the ODIs, then thats definitely an advantage as you can play once extra batsman or one extra bowler even. But if I dont have a Gilchrist or Sangakkara at my disposal, I wont force my keepers to become top order batsmen the way India did for a couple of years before Dhoni came with the likes of Deep Das Gupta, Ajay Ratra and Parthiv Patel.

 

[Uppercut]

Yeah, you pick the best bat of the decent or better keepers available.

I agree with this. But I set the bar for what constitutes a "decent" keeper a bit higher than most, I suspect.

 

[Cruxdude]

I would like a Dhoni

 

[Richard]

Depends on team balance, for mine.

Never have much agreed with this TBH. Unless it refers to what sort of pitches you play on and thus whether your attack is spin-dominated rather than seam-dominated, I consider that a good-batsman-decent-wicketkeeper adds more to any side than a moderate-to-poor-batsman-outstanding-wicketkeeper. I don't care in the slightest how strong the specialist batting is - you can never have enough batting and as long as your wicketkeeper is decent and your attack is seam-dominated, you should still pick the best batsman of them.

 

[Uppercut]

I would like a Dhoni

I don't actually think Dhoni's good enough with the gloves. Not when keeping for India, anyway, because he struggles keeping to spin. For Australia or South Africa, he'd be perfect. You pick him anyway, obviously, but it's not ideal.

 

[Cruxdude]

I don't actually think Dhoni's good enough with the gloves. Not when keeping for India, anyway, because he struggles keeping to spin. For Australia or South Africa, he'd be perfect. You pick him anyway, obviously, but it's not ideal.

Yeah you are right in saying that he is not a very good keeper against spinners. He has missed quite a few catches close up. But I think he is value enough for the team to overlook his faults.