England’s wicketkeeper quandary: Ranking the contenders in Bazball’s problem position

Previous England selection committees would let it be rumoured that a player was going to be dropped, or else suddenly drop him. The regime of Robert Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes have a different approach, a silent one: if a player is not endorsed publicly during or at the end of a Test series, this is the time for him to be worried about his place.

Alex Lees was the first to receive this silent vote of no confidence from England’s Test selectors. Now it is the turn of Jonny Bairstow and Ben Foakes after their moderate Test series in India with the bat. While attention turns to the T20 World Cup, it looks as though somebody new will be selected as the next wicketkeeper-batsman for England’s Test side, starting at Lord’s on July 10 against West Indies.

Here are the six players considered to be the main candidates (vote for your choice at the bottom):

Jonny Bairstow

Time was when Bairstow was the perfect No 7 – given the odd human error – until Ed Smith became chairman of England’s selectors and promoted him to No 5; an untenable position for a wicketkeeper. Now it is too late to wind the clock back: Bairstow is a specialist batsman and occasional keeper because after his major leg surgery he is not flexible enough for the acrobatics required. The brilliant dive for a one-handed catch standing back, yes, but not for keeping to spinners for long spells any more. The other point arising from last winter: after notching his 100th Test cap, does he have the hunger to buckle down and grind out large scores when necessary? The evidence in India, as he made a start but failed to reach 40, was that his mindset is: don’t hang around.

Run-making ability 8/10
Wicketkeeping 6/10
Batting with the tail 9/10
Super strength The time for all guns blazing, like chasing a target.

Ben Foakes

After one early lapse in India, he had an almost flawless winter behind the stumps. If there was a better wicketkeeper in the world, especially when taking spinners, nobody seemed to know his or her name. Some of the catches, after the batsman’s edge had made the ball deviate a relatively wide angle, were all too little appreciated. But a total of 205 runs in 10 innings was inadequate. And his Test career strike-rate of 47 – in other words, fewer than three runs per over – will suffice in England against lesser teams but not in Australia in 20 months’ time if the top order has wobbled and the tail are exposed. And it is probably fair to add that if he could have incorporated a greater weight of stroke into his batting he would have done so by the age of 31. It is like Joe Root and T20. Foakes and power-hitting do not go together.

Run-making ability 7/10
Wicketkeeping 10/10
Batting with the tail 6/10
Super strength  Standing up to the stumps to spinners.

Phil Salt

As with Bairstow, his qualities are physical strength, combativeness, athleticism and efficiency rather than finesse, whether batting or keeping wicket. More rugged than sleek, but that does not matter at the turning point of a Test match. What matters is that Salt, at 27, is more of a white-ball than red-ball cricketer – though not to quite the same extent as Jos Buttler at a similar age. Salt had an early grounding in the championship as a specialist batsman in Sussex’s top order, and has scored six first-class centuries, while Buttler has made seven in his entire career. When keeping too, to the red ball with all its characteristics, Salt’s relative inexperience could be telling. In sum, he would be a prime candidate if England happened to be looking for a wicketkeeper who could bat in the top order of their Test team; less so for a keeper-bat at seven, though he would no doubt be assertive if given the task of batting with the tail. Besides, Salt has so many white-ball commitments that he could not, like Buttler, devote all his energies to being England’s Test keeper-bat.

Run-making ability 8/10
Wicketkeeping 6/10
Batting with the tail 8/10
Super strength Intrepid physicality in all he does.

Ollie Robinson

The best qualified of the new candidates, which is not to say he will get the job. It might seem as though he has come from nowhere but he actually hails from Kent as so many of England’s finest wicketkeepers have done, like Les Ames, Godfrey Evans and Alan Knott (and like them, he did not go to a fee-paying school as most of today’s wicketkeeper-batsmen do). Unable to pin down a white-ball position at Kent, he moved to Durham and has blossomed, especially as a red-ball batsman in their No 5 spot. In Durham’s sole win this season, at a lively Kidderminster, his counterattacking 50 on the opening day – especially strong on the pull and whip to leg – set them up; and in his last innings he hit an unbeaten career-best 171 off 206 balls which took them close to their target of 475. But a question about his wicketkeeping – how good is he to his left? – arose during that game against Lancashire. When their left-hander Keaton Jennings edged early on, Robinson twitched to his right while the ball flew precisely between keeper and first slip i.e. a keeper’s catch. Media would be all over such a miss in a Test. It could be overlooked in a championship match, except that Jennings went on to make the match-shaping century, and standing at mid-off was… Ben Stokes.

Run-making ability 8/10
Wicketkeeping 7/10
Batting with the tail 8/10
Super strength Counter-attacking, like Bairstow has done but Foakes has not.

Jamie Smith

In 1991-92 England unveiled an exceptional opening batsman, Alec Stewart. They could have launched the post-Gooch era with a high-class complementary opening partnership of Mike Atherton, defending, and the attacking Stewart. Instead, the selectors made Stewart bat down the order and keep wicket, and a decade of mediocrity ensued. The same mistake should not be made this time. Smith can keep wicket, rather like Foakes on a bad day, but he is an outstanding batsman in the making, in every format, and should be allowed to concentrate on that (he could be a reserve keeper, on a quiet winter tour, like Ollie Pope, but no more). His batting? Suppose Joe Root was starting now, doing all the weight-training and playing all the T20 power-shots from birth: this is what Smith is like. One dazzling talent, in red-ball cricket at No 4, but also a brilliant power-hitter, bending his knees, flexing his muscles – and already the scorer of the fastest hundred for the Lions. Or what about his 45 off 25 in Surrey’s run-chase against Somerset in April? Please don’t spoil it, or him, this time.

Run-making ability 10/10
Wicketkeeping 4/10
Batting with the tail 7/10
Super strength In one simple word, batting.

James Rew

It would have been an ideal form of tertiary education – after King’s College, Taunton, the alma mater of Buttler – if Rew, aged 20 and four months, had been able to keep wicket now to Jack Leach and Shoaib Bashir simultaneously; but selecting two specialist spinners in English cricket seems to have been outlawed, so he has to make do with one or other, and sometimes neither. Meanwhile, off Somerset’s seamers, he has been taking some brilliant one-handed catches at full stretch to his right – and he is naturally left-handed. As a batsman he is like an old-fashioned No 6, playing himself in quietly and calmly before airing his strokes: exactly what you would want if England were collapsing in the next Ashes series but not what the management will want at seven against lesser countries before then. When Rew tried to start more aggressively earlier this season it did not work, but he is now back to scoring first-class centuries – seven so far – at his own tempo.

Run-making ability 8/10
Wicketkeeping 8/10
Batting with the tail 6/10
Super strength His calmness when starting an innings, accentuated by his swift and decisive footwork when the ball is delivered.

Now have you say...