KP will not be dropped, rightly or wrongly they are trying to kill two birds with one stone by trying to get him to open again. I liked it when they tried it the first time, and similarly to my initial outlook on Keiswetter, I'm going to say that under the chance it works, the payoff will be more than worth the risk. Last roll of the dice for mine - if this doesn't work, then I'm done with him.
They rather have painted themselves into a corner by deploying Keiswetter in the middle order. It's playing a guy out of position when playing him in position was the only reason he was in the squad in the first place. There is no reason why Keiswetter is any better at no.6 than Prior, who people are all too ready to forget did well there for several months before Keiswetter's meteoric rise in 2010. I'm not saying go back to Prior in ODIs, just that this is a compromise that helps no-one and doesn't solve anything. I always argue with a rhetoric along the lines of "I don't care who replaces them, they need to be dropped", because that's completely unconstructive illogical. But what I'm seeing from Keiswetter, while knowing of Prior, Davies, Buttler, Bairstow, Foster or just about friggin' anyone, I've stopped myself an inch before saying it.
Sadly, Buttler won't keep ahead of Keiswetter on this tour, not only because he's a mediocre keeper but because he's much better deployed in the outfield. That's how they want to use him. And I know this because if they wanted to play him as a keeper/bat they would have done it by now. Buttler's performances on the A-tour to SL, against an attack including Test spinners and a World Cup Final spinner, are the kind of performances that make national selection look ridiculously easy. 102(56), 40(34), 119(130), 1(3) and 64(31) are the kind of numbers an England selector should be thanking his lucky stars for, absolving him from all responsibility of having to make a tight call.
I wouldn't mind him playing as a specialist bat at all, but since it presumably means dropping the man who has been our best ODI bat over the last three years, or a man who just hit a 50 and is being deployed to high in the order for Buttler to replace, they will end up leaving out a man who has more weight of domestic and Lions performances behind him than anyone has possibly ever had for an attainable England place.
