Line and Length
Cricketer Of The Year
This is a perfectly valid point, particularly for our younger members (under 50) who may not have seen many of the keepers under consideration. Considering pre WWII players such as Oldfield and Ames is difficult for all members with this regard though I suspect Ames' high ranking is influenced more than a little by his batting record.Pant is better than most guys getting votes anyway. It's just people blindly under-rating the present. Unlike the batting and bowling lists, I find it impossible to evaluate older keepers for whom there's little to no footage available. Keeping stats are horribly unreliable and tell us nothing. All we're left with is anecdotal testimony and I refuse to use solely that in the absence of reliable stats to measure their effectiveness. From hereon in, I'm not giving any votes to keepers pre 1970 or so on principle.
When evaluating keepers from earlier generations we often have to rely on anecdotal writings of experts and past players who, sadly, have since past on.
I am fortunate to have seen players such as Evans (on 'live' b&w TV in England), Grout, Dujon, Knott and Marsh (all live) as well as more recent 'keepers. I must apologise to our SC members as my cricket watching days in the '70s and '80s and earlier were dominated by Ashes games and those involving the WI in their prime. Hence, other than more recent keepers, I have difficulty in evaluating many SC glovemen.